Book Review: East Texas P.I. turns vigilante in funny and savage ‘Sugar on the Bones’
Minnie Polson was in some sort of trouble, so a friend recommended the private eye firm of Hap Collins, his wife Brett, and their pal Leonard Pine. But when they meet, Minnie doesn’t like their attitude, and they don’t like hers.
Hours after they agree to part company, Minnie’s mansion burns to the ground—the fire so intense that the only thing left of Minnie is a blackened arm. At first, the authorities deem it an accident, but Hap and company aren’t so sure.
Feeling a bit guilty that they’d turned her away, and wondering if she’d be alive if they hadn’t, they decide to poke around a little to see what they might turn up. They turn up plenty in “Sugar on the Bones,” Joe R. Lansdale’s 13th thriller featuring the East Texas private eyes.
Hap and his partners are clever, persistent, politically incorrect, heavily armed and capable of extreme violence when threatened or provoked. They also think they’re funny and often are, the humor trending toward irony, wisecracks and sarcasm.
At first, the detectives focus on Minnie’s relatives, some of whom had a lot to gain from the rich woman’s death. However, somebody doesn’t like the private eyes asking questions. Soon, people they interview about the case start turning up dead, and Hap and his partners are targeted for murder.
It turns out that Minnie’s death was a small cog in a massive conspiracy involving a series of hideous crimes. For a time, the private detectives work with a senior police official, but he can’t figure out a legal way to end the carnage. So he tells the detectives he’ll look the other way if they take the bad guys off the board.
“It’s murder. It’s unlawful. It’s vigilante,” Hap says. “And I didn’t want to do it. But I knew I would.”
So Hap and company recruit three old friends who have even fewer compunctions about violence than they do, and they go to war. The result is what may be the best novel in this fine series. The quirky characters are well drawn, the prose is tight, the pace is furious, the surprises keep coming and the violent climax is nothing less than savage.
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Bruce DeSilva, winner of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, is the author of the Mulligan crime novels including “The Dread Line.”
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