Jackrabbit Smile

Arrived in great shape.

Love the Hap and Leonard books . love all the Twist and turns In this book . didn't know who where good are if all where bad.Joe Lansdale is a great author

.....this one is my least favorite.

You know I love Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard books, so it won’t really surprise anyone that Jackrabbit Smile, the 11th entry in the series, brought me as much joy as it did. Within less than a page, Lansdale had me laughing hard enough that I was sending paragraphs to friends to share in my delight, as our boys have a celebration interrupted by a pair of segregationists in need of help. (As you might imagine, Leonard, being black, militant, smart-mouthed, and outspokenly gay, handles this situation particularly well.) Lansdale has always refused to look away from the prevalence of racism and bigotry in poor communities, often letting the series handle different aspects of it all, and Jackrabbit Smile is no exception, as the boys find the disappearance connected to a local figure who’s more than willing to make use of people’s beliefs and prejudices to help himself out.When you read some of the classics of the noir genre (your Hammetts, your Chandlers), you often find that while the plotting is dense and satisfying, that’s not what brings you to the books; no, it’s the dialogue, the banter, the writing, the mood, and just the experience of it all. The same thing goes for Lansdale’s books; oh, the plot here is great, with some fantastic setpieces (including a superb sequence involving a raid on a compound), but what you’ll remember is the dialogue and the play between characters. You’ll remember the way Leonard constantly finds ways to jab at the racist clients, or the recurring plot of one character’s fame for brewing the worst coffee of all time. You’ll remember Leonard’s excitement over a new hat, or Hap’s inability to walk away from a bad situation, or the adoption of a neglected dog, or Hap’s musings on returning to his hometown after so many years. And more than any of those, you’ll remember the mood of that final chapter, where it feels like a line has been crossed in an unexpected way, even by the standards of these books, and you’ll remember that at their core, these books are both noir tales and tales of friendship – and those two worlds don’t always go perfectly together.

I’ve read all of the books in the series and this one didn’t disappoint! I love the dark humor and bizarre situations that Hap and Leonard find themselves in.Joe Lansdale is a master at weaving a great tale. I look forward to his new releases. I just wished he wrote faster!