I am very pleased to find that a new Hap and Leonard novel is being published just weeks before the March 2nd premiere of the new SundanceTV series featuring Joe R. Lansdale’s iconic creations. Will the show be as good as the books? That remains to be seen, but the program will have to reach the heights of the newly released HONKY TONK SAMURAI, yet another jawdropper from the seemingly indefatigable favorite son of Nacogdoches, Texas.

Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are ivory and ebony, if you will, mismatched twin sons of different mothers with a bond that transcends friendship. Hap is a reluctant but skilled warrior who hates guns but will use them, albeit reluctantly, while Leonard, addicted to vanilla cookies and Dr. Pepper, has...well, anger issues, among other things. The duo plies their trade as private investigators off the grid in East Texas, trying to do their job and avoid trouble while being spectacularly unsuccessful on one or both counts.

"You’ll underline, write down, or otherwise preserve for posterity Lansdale’s marvelous turns of phrase, earthy similes and metaphors, and descriptions that are by turns profane and poetic --- and sometimes both at once."

HONKY TONK SAMURAI begins sedately enough --- for the first paragraph or so --- with Hap and Leonard on a quiet stakeout pursuant to a domestic investigation. They witness a man beating a dog, an incident into which Leonard interjects himself quite forcefully and effectively. Things get sorted out in due course, but when the dust settles and the smoke clears, a witness of and chronologer to the end jawbones Hap and Leonard into taking a missing persons case. Lilly Buckner is a hilariously foul-mouthed senior citizen (very senior citizen) whose beloved adult granddaughter, Sandy, went missing some five years before. It’s a cold case, for sure, and Hap and Leonard are drawn into it somewhat reluctantly as the employees of the newly minted Brett Sawyer Agency, owned by and named after Hap’s feisty significant other.

They follow an old trail backward in time to Sandy’s last employer, a business that deals in high-end, pre-owned automobiles that seems to be selling a lot more than transportation. The dealership is the first rock that they kick over in a whole field full of them, and there are poisonous snakes and venomous spiders galore under each and every one of them. There is, of course, plenty of repartee, light-hearted and otherwise, along the way, as the trail to Sandy leads through a pack of vicious contract killers who have been operating in plain sight for years. They are aided in this endeavor by friends and associates, new and old, some unexpected and others unwelcome. There are surprises as well, particularly for Hap, including one that portends a life-changing experience. By the time the book concludes, everything --- and I mean everything --- looks like it’s going to change.

HONKY TONK SAMURAI, as with its predecessors, is hilarious, crude and violent, peppered through and through with unforgettable characters that leap off the page, dance around the room, and run off down the road. It doesn’t get any better than this. You’ll underline, write down, or otherwise preserve for posterity Lansdale’s marvelous turns of phrase, earthy similes and metaphors, and descriptions that are by turns profane and poetic --- and sometimes both at once. Give this man a National Medal of the Arts for his entire body of work. And the ending? Oh my, don’t even get me talking about that. Just read the book and watch the series. Please.