Captains Outrageous (Hap Collins and Leonard Pine Series #6) » (Reprint)

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Vanilla Ride, The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust and Leather Maiden. He has received the British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Edgar Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, and seven Bram Stoker Awards. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas. www.joerlansdale.com

Hap Collins and Leonard Pine, the bad ol' good ol' boys of the Lansdale classics Mucho Mojo and Bad Chili, return to LaBorde, Texas, in their first appearance since 1998's Rumble Tumble!

Book Magazine

Best buddies Hap Collins and Leonard Pine get into trouble more often during the course of this book than most characters could manage in an entire series. These East Texas rowdies are working as security guards for a chicken-processing plant which makes for several almost-funny chicken jokes when Hap saves the life of a young woman who turns out to be the plant owner's daughter. Hap is rewarded for his heroics with a large check and a Caribbean cruise, which he takes with his friend Leonard. The two are quickly abandoned by the cruise ship in a small port, mugged by off-duty cops and saved by an old fisherman who is a whiz with a machete all this before becoming ensnared in an elaborate, sometimes improbable, plot involving murder and revenge. What makes this duo unusual is that Hap is a white heterosexual and Leonard is a black homosexual. So along with the chicken humor you also get a handful of black-white, gay-straight jokes. Lansdale's last book, The Bottoms, won the prestigious Edgar Award, but if you've never picked up his other books, you'll probably scratch your head while reading this one and wonder what the fuss is about.
Randy Michael Signor