Rumble Tumble by
Joe R. Lansdale
pbk out October 98
(Gollancz)
at £9.99
The old saying has it that there are only two things you can count on in life: death and taxes. I say add a third: a Joe R. Lansdale novel is always a damn fine read.
RUMBLE TUMBLE marks Lansdale's fifth excursion with East Texas decent old boys Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, and it's five times lucky. Here, Hap and Leonard set out to find the prostitute daughter
of Hap's latest lady friend, being kept in the life by some very nasty men indeed in the unlikely setting of Hootie Hoot, Oklahoma. Biker gangs, gun crazies, midgets and an armadillo named Bob all
figure in the action as the boys head deep into the Mexican badlands to look for one lost girl who may not even want to be found. Ultimately, the book is far less about the quest to save the (not so
fair) maiden, as it is about the things friends and lovers do for each other in the name of nothing more - or less - than love and friendship.
The success of RUMBLE TUMBLE, and this series, is down to one thing, plain and simple: character. Lansdale knows his people and how to make them real. No matter how bizarre the plot - and
Lansdale's plots are firmly situated in the neighbourhood of outlandish-adjacent - the characters ring true-to-life. Hap and Leonard become that much more fully realized with each new volume, and Hap especially is a wonderfully mixed-up figure. It's always tempting, if dangerous, to conflate a first-person narrator with the author, but it's hard not to see Hap's expressions of concern over the shiftless course of his middle-aged life as an unpensioned writer's lament of uncertainty. I know I can identify with it. As in the previous books, the minor characters, too, are a delight. I have to admit, I winced some when the midget came into the story - let's face it, midgets are iconic for cheap and easy jokes - but Lansdale makes little Red into a fully developed and compelling character. *And* a funny one.
A strong vein of humour, much of it of the sick variety, runs through all the Hap and Leonard books, though RUMBLE TUMBLE, while often funny, is a touch darker than some of the others. I have
previously compared Lansdale to James Crumley, and the Mexican sequence in the present book shows Lansdale at his most Crumley-esque; I'm just not sure if that's a good thing. Let Lansdale be Lansdale, to paraphrase a not entirely salubrious
American political slogan, because that's more than enough to satisfy any reader. RUMBLE TUMBLE is not the best volume in the series, but complaining about a book this enjoyable is surely the
dictionary definition of "churlish." I'm already looking forward to the next one.
(
Jay Russell
- one of the greatest talents the horror industry has produced for some time… (Black Tears))
Rumble Tumble by
Joe R. Lansdale