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Summary
Summary
Hap and Leonard investigate a racially motivated murder that threatens to tear apart their East Texas town.
While Hap, a former 60s activist and self-proclaimed white trash rebel, is recovering from a life-threatening stab wound, Louise Elton comes into Hap and Leonard's PI office to tell him that the police have killed her son, Jamar.
Months earlier, a bully cop pulled over and sexually harassed Jamar's sister, Charm. The officer followed Charm over the course of the next couple of months, leading Jamar to videotape and take notes on the cop and his partner. The next thing Louise hears, Jamar got in a fight and is killed in the projects by local hoods. It doesn't add up: he was a straight A student, destined for better things, until he began to ask too many questions about the racist police force.
Leonard, a tough black gay Vietnam vet and Republican, joins Hap in the investigation, and they stumble upon the racial divides that have shaped their Eastern Texas town. But if anyone can navigate these pitfalls and bring the killers to justice, it's Hap and Leonard.
Filled with Lansdale's trademark whip-smart dialogue, colorful characters, and relentless pacing, Rusty Puppy is Joe Lansdale at his page-turning best.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The murder of Jamar Elton, a young black man, propels Edgar-winner Lansdale's dark, moving 12th novel featuring crime fighters Hap Collins and Leonard Pine (after 2016's Honky Tonk Samurai). A witness, recidivist criminal Timpson Weed, claims to have seen three white police officers beat Elton to death near a project house in the East Texas community of Camp Rapture. Unfortunately, Weed soon ends up dead. Aided by a motley crew, including Hap's daughter, Chance, and Reba, who regards herself as a 400-year-old midget vampire (but is actually a tough-talking adolescent girl from the projects), Hap and Leonard follow a trail that keeps leading them to an old abandoned mill outside town, where illegal dogfights and perhaps even more sinister activities are taking place. As always, Lansdale spins a wild, rollicking yarn, but behind all the mayhem is a heartfelt tale about friendship, brotherhood, loyalty, and family. Hap and Leonard are complicated, violent men, but they display a basic humanity and decency that carries this remarkable series along. Seven-city author tour. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Louise Elton needs police help, but the cops in the little East Texas town of Camp Rapture are the problem, not the solution. She thinks her son was murdered and believes the Camp Rapture cops did it. She needs a couple of outsiders to look into it. Hap Collins and Leonard Pine agree to help, though the $65 she offers to pay will hardly cover the gas for a couple trips to Camp Rapture. There is a man in Rapture who says he saw the murder, but he isn't talking. Hap and Leonard blunder through Rapture, annoying everyone in sight. What they learn is that the cops are operating a fight club in which the dead losers, usually desperately poor residents, are dumped in a toxic pond left over from an old paper mill, becoming rusty puppies. Lansdale is an Edgar-winning author (The Bottoms, 2000) of more than 40 novels across genres. His ongoing Hap and Leonard series has become a popular Sundance TV show, which will be back for its second season in 2017. The novels themselves are a unique mix of sly humor and horrific violence. Readers will laugh at some particularly profane smart-ass repartee and then want to cover their eyes a couple sentences later as the violence explodes. Another fine entry in a great series.--Lukowsky, Wes Copyright 2016 Booklist