Williams, the duo has turned up in more than a dozen novels and a handful of story collections. All while cracking jokes with each other and munching on copious helpings of vanilla wafer cookies.īeyond their appearance the Sundance series, which starred James Purefoy and the late Michael K. Since their debut in Lansdale's 1990 novel, Savage Season, the pair has gone up against serial killers, white supremacists, deranged cultists, crooked cops and even the Dixie Mafia.

Hap Collins is 'a self-proclaimed white trash rebel,' and Leonard Pine, 'a tough-as-nails Black, gay, Vietnam vet and Republican,' the author notes. Lansdale has been writing about Hap and Leonard for more than 30 years - 'The Boys,' as he calls them. There's some place in there where we understand where that comes from, and that's the scary part.' That doesn't mean all of us are evil, but it means we recognize it and are appalled by it because we know that it exists. And the reason we're fascinated by it is all of us have that element in us. 'Also, a lot of it's just that pure fascination we have with darkness and evil. 'Sometimes I do it to point at certain things and say, 'Look at this' - and not to get a gross out, but to consider what this is about and why it occurred. That's what makes it challenging.'ĭealing with dark and nasty themes is something Lansdale has embraced through his career, which has included writing horror, mysteries, Westerns, adventure yarns and even comic books. 'Sometimes it's about writing despicable people and despicable ideas, which doesn't necessarily mean that you're representing those as your beliefs, but that's what fiction is. 'Writing is supposed to be challenging,' Lansdale told The Current. In recent years, Lansdale's work has gained a wider audience thanks to Sundance's 2016-2018 Hap and Leonard series based on his crime-solving duo, and from movie adaptations of his Cold In July and Bubba Ho-Tep. Since the early 1980s, the author has racked up a formidable following and plenty of awards for describing the bleak side of the universe. It's the kind of detail only a veteran writer would think to include, and it's enough to make even the most fearless reader wince.įans of Lansdale's writing won't be too surprised, though. Somehow, though, the grisliest aspect of the scene is the mound of fire ants she's managed to fall on while fleeing her captors. With her last breaths, the woman reveals she's a sex worker who's been abducted by a pair of psychos fixated on raping and hunting her for sport. Her feet are a bloody mess, and an arrow juts from her side. Lansdale's Born for Trouble: The Further Adventures of Hap and Leonard, the book's protagonists stumble upon a half-nude woman bleeding to death near Caddo Lake - a bayou bordering Louisiana and the Lone Star State. Lansdale's latest novel is another entry in his Hap and Leonard series.

The thicket by joe lansdale