Honky Tonk Samurai

“That’s love for you. When it’s good, it’s magic. When it isn’t, it just pees all in your soup.”
Ahh, Mr. Lansdale. Such a way with words...

LOVED the character Lilly Buckner, the straight talking, foul mouthed old lady that hires Hap and Leonard to find her granddaughter! Her dialogue is vulgarly precious! And Jim Bob and his Red Bitch are in here too! Again, more vulgarly precious language! Add yet another favorite from past books, and a nutcase named Booger, and you have a rag-tag team formed to take on the Canceler!

Another great H&L book! And it has one of the bleakest endings yet! I might have to re-read "Rusty Puppy" to remember what happens next! Aww, shucks!

I don't think there's many authors that could take a series, 11 books in, and keep it not only fresh and fun, but poignant and real as well.

Lansdale can.

This series is strange in that it's just a story of two good ol' boys who magnets for trouble and death. But, on the other hand, this series is about so much more. There's hidden depths here.

And the writing, while continuing to be wonderful and hilarious, also is created with the care and craftmanship of a poet, albeit a foul-mouthed one.

I cannot express how much I love this series.

If I have one complaint, it's this: I didn't mind the author mentioning his daughter in a passing conversation. No problem. But to then bring her up again later, highlighting both her album and a specific show more song? Bit too heavy-handed on the product placement.

But that is my one and only complaint about this novel. I loved it. show less

I've been a fan of the Hap and Leonard series for a few years now, and I have to say this was a really great volume in the series. This time around, a little old lady blackmails Hap and Leonard into finding her missing granddaughter after she films Leonard beating the crap out of a guy who was abusing a dog. As is usual for the series, the investigation gets dangerous really quickly since it turns out the car lot the granddaughter was working at is the front for a prostitution ring run by the Dixie Mafia which tends to react to people snooping around by having their balls cut off and their throats slit. Naturally Hap and Leonard manage to get through it all by being fairly tough customers themselves, and even call in a little help from show more their old friends Jim Bob Luke and Vanilla Ride. There is plenty of the standard Hap and Leonard smart talk, which is often humorous (though also sometimes just annoying). The book also has some genuinely moving moments with Hap discovering that he may be a father, and the ending in which Hap seemingly dies and which left simultaneously on the verge of crying and considering cursing Joe Lansdale's name. show less

I’ve done it again – started reading a well established crime fiction series with its most current book, well after the long histories of the main characters have been firmly planted in the minds of longtime series fans. This time I did it with Joe Lansdale’s Hap and Leonard books about two East Texas good old boys (one white and one black) who somehow manage to survive whatever violent mishap their collective lack of good sense gets them into. But as it turns out, Honky Tonk Samurai is not a bad book for uninitiated Hap and Leonard fans to begin with because it reunites the boys with several colorful characters from their past – and Lansdale kindly provides a short back-story for each of them.

Hap and Leonard haven’t exactly show more been getting rich working in a small town private detective agency, but when the agency owner decides to sell out so that he can become the town’s new police chief, they are left with two choices: become unemployed or find a way to buy the agency from the new cop. Luckily for them, Hap’s girlfriend, who is unhappy with her nursing job, decides to use her savings to buy herself a career change. Now Hap and Leonard have a new boss.

The agency’s first customer might be an old woman who can barely make it up the stairs to their office, but as soon as she opens her mouth, Hap and Leonard know that she is a fighter. In language that shocks even Leonard at times, the old woman explains that she wants the pair to find her granddaughter, a young woman who several years earlier disappeared along with the $50,000 she stole from her grandmother. She suggests that they begin their search at the upscale classic car dealership that her granddaughter was working at when she disappeared.

Boy, what a can-of-worms that would turn out to be.

Let’s just say that some car dealers sell more than cars from their showroom floor, and because they really don’t want the whole world to know about it, snoopers have to be silenced. Before they know it, Hap and Leonard are outnumbered, outgunned, and hiding from a family of crazy hit men whose terrifyingly creative hits put them in a league all their own. If Hap and Leonard are to survive their first case, it’s time for them to call in the troops.

One of the benefits of coming to a fictional series late in its run is that, if the book clicks, the reader ends up with a whole pile of books to add to the TBR list. And that is exactly what’s happened to me with Honky Tonk Samurai. I plan to spend a lot more time with Hap and Leonard…and their friends. show less

Hap and Leonard go PI, though they're not that good at it. Fortunately Hap's girlfriend Brett takes over the business and she's better. Hired to track down a young woman who went missing five years before by a mean old grandmother, they quickly find themselves in a mess of prostitution, blackmail, bikers and hired killers. Help from Jim-Bob, Booger and even the deadly Vanilla Ride might be enough to do what needs doing, but not necessarily enough to get them through alive. Funny, thoughtful, rude crude and vulgar and spectacularly violent - classic Hap and Leonard.

I'll admit, I have never read any of the other books in the series and I picked this book up solely because the cover was so badass. Even though this book was the eleventh in the series I didn't feel as if I missed out on too much, they alluded to some other cases and characters but nothing big. Overall I enjoyed this quirky mystery novel about two best friends in the private eye business. Hal is a white trash rebel and Leonard is a big black gay veteren, together they combine their brains and brawn to tackle whatever cases they've been given. When a little old lady asks them for help finding her granddaughter, five years lost, they never imagine the trouble it will lead them to. Motorcycle gangs, the Dixie Mafia, high end escorts, show more fancy cars, and assassins that cut the balls off their victims for fun are just the tip of the iceberg. Good fun all around, I wouldn't mind reading more of the series, especially since it's a tv show now! show less

I haven't read a book this bad in a long time and judging by the anemic circulation in my library of the Hap and Leonard mysteries, I'm not the only one. The fact that Publishers Weekly gave it a star review is beyond my intellectual capability to understand.

When ninety-something year old Lilly Buckner sees Hap and Leonard beat up a man abusing his dog, she determines that they are the perfect private investigators to find her granddaughter, Sandy, who has been missing for five years. They have the same spunk and sass that she has. She is unable to provide much information except that Sandy was working at a local high end antique car dealer when she disappeared. What these two bumbling P.I.s uncover is a prostitution ring where the show more models standing alongside the autos in the catalog actually come with the car. As they dig, they uncover a biker meth lab with killers for hire and a family of professional killers. A side story involves the appearance on Hap's doorstep of Chance, a twenty five year old girl claiming to be the daughter Hap never knew he had.

This installment of the Hap and Leonard series, following Dead Aim in 2013, has strained humor, excessively vulgar language and a paper thin plot. The characters, both good and bad, are devoid of any likeable characteristics, even Hap as he sentimentally ponders instant parenthood. The attempted sharp repartee falls short. This is a failed attempt at a humorous mystery. show less