Joe R. Lansdale has said that Hap and Leonard, his most abiding creations, exist in their own special timeframe. They get older with each story, but not at the same speed we do, even though the world they live in does. That's understandable, but a little awkward here as we suddenly find them in a very contemporary East Texas, that is a different place to the overtly racist location that we've got to know over eleven previous novels and a bunch of shorter works. It's still racist, but that racism is quieter, because it's not socially acceptable any more. Plenty of people have let it go or never picked it up, including a police department, which is refreshing. Those who do hold to their prejudice do so after looking over their shoulder or in different wording, playing up segregation rather than lynching. And yet, Hap and Leonard are still Hap and Leonard.

Which makes it interesting that they take the case brought to them in inappropriate clothing. Hap has just tied the knot with Brett and they're celebrating in the back yard when a couple of Pentecostal white supremacists in need come to see them. They're rather shocked when a succession of friends and colleagues from multiple races show up to celebrate around them, given that the man's shirt reads "White is Right", but they are polite enough to correct their use of the N word to "colored man". They're Judith Mulhaney and her son Thomas and they want to find her daughter/his sister Jackie, who's been gone for five years and gone may now be missing. The title is a reference to her, because her buck teeth led to a nickname of Jackrabbit.

Brett takes the case and so off go Hap and Leonard to Hap's old stomping ground of Marvel Creek, which leads to quite the nostalgia trip for him. We've already had some of that at his wedding celebration with a number of characters from previous books, whom we haven't seen in a while, favourites like Manuela Martinez and Reba the four-hundred-year-old vampire midget. They don't play any further part in proceedings but it's good to see them anyway. But in Marvel Creek, where Hap grew up, many of the characters turn out to be people he knew in high school or at least recognises. I've revisited my old stomping grounds after a long time away and I get all the nostalgia that wells up and the disappointment that follows at how it’s all changed.

This case, of yet another missing girl, promises to be a particularly weird one. The back cover club of my edition is a little misleading, because our boys don't really tangle with "a revivalist cult that believes Jesus will return flanked by an army of lizard men". Sure, Sebastian, Jackrabbit's father, preached a conspiracy theory gospel in which lizard men played their part, but he's gone by the time they get to his church, he's dead and buried. Hap remembers his replacement from school, now a preacher with quirks of his own but not quite that wild. Really, the weirdest thing here is the manner of Sebastian's death, given that he wanted someone to murder him in a very specific ritualistic way. Come now, you didn't expect the corpses to not add up here?

I found this novel a patient one but a firm one. Lansdale sits back and lets it grow, but never lets it wander away from the point it's reaching. It's all about race and money, two of Texas' favourite subjects, and there's a great deal of karma involved in the way it eventually wraps up. Lansdale is even patient with his wrap-up stories, as he gifts us with a few of them, each handled perfectly and without undue fuss. I can't say that I didn't expect some of what goes down, but not all of it and Lansdale has lots of fun weaving the connections that various characters have with Jackrabbit together until we can figure out what the big picture looks like.

My problem comes from wondering how to place it within the rest of the series, because it's a little different, in ways that don't seem apparent until after the fact. It has a simpler flow than the other recent novels, because it doesn't get the usual escalation halfway through, when it could have wrapped up as a novella. It almost wants to because Hap and Leonard leave Marvel Creek and promise not to go back, only to inevitably to do so, but that is not the same thing. This one rumbles along, a little steadier and a little more inexorably, until it gets to where it plans to go.

And that means that, even with all the nostalgia for times gone by that carries over from the recent short story collection, it feels like a new chapter in the saga that is Hap and Leonard. I'm now even more eager to dive into the final book in the series thus far, 'The Elephant of Surprise', next month. Will that continue in the vein of this book, so cementing a subtly new approach to these novels, playing out like novellas but a little longer and more complex? Or will it go back to the two-layer novels that played as the vague template for the series for so long? I guess I'll find out in May.

Before I wrap this review up, I'll mention that our unlikely heroes end up rescuing another dog, as they've done before. This one's a little different, though, for a number of reasons and Rex proves to be a notable addition to the cast of characters. There may not be a single escalation point in the middle of the book, but the novel does build as it goes and Rex is the impetus for one of those steps-up. Boy, do I still feel that scene deep in my bones, just as I feel a later scene that I similarly won't spoil. Lansdale's more patient approach doesn't preclude some truly impactful scenes and he is very happy to rook us between the eyes with a few of those late on.

In other words, this is a sleeper of a novel. It isn't as immediate as something like 'Vanilla Ride', but it carries an effective punch. We just don't see it coming. ~~ Hal C F Astell

For more titles by Joe R Lansdale click here