Devil Red

Hap and Leonard, Book 8

By: Joe R. Lansdale

Narrated by: JD Jackson

Hap and Leonard is now a Sundance TV series starring James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams.

If there’s one thing Hap Collins and Leonard Pine like, it’s trouble - and they especially like getting paid to find it. So when their friend and sometime boss Marvin Harmon asks the boys to look into a cold-case double homicide, they’re happy to oblige. It turns out that both victims were set to inherit some serious money, and one of them ran with an honest-to-goodness vampire cult. The more closely Hap and Leonard look over the crime-scene photos, the more trouble they see. The image of a red devil’s head painted on a tree is just the beginning - a little research turns up a slew of murders with that same fiendish signature. And if things aren’t weird enough, Leonard has taken to wearing a deestalker cap.... Will this be the case that finally sends Hap over the edge?

©2011 Joe R. Lansdale. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“The humor and dialogue keep the narrative rocketing along.” (Entertainment Weekly)

“There’s enough seriousness to make this novel stand far apart from run-of-the-mill thrillers - and enough comedy to have readers laughing through the blood spatters.” (Publishers Weekly)

“Lansdale is a terrifically gifted storyteller with a sharp country boy wit.” (The Washington Post Book World)

Good story, meh narrator.

The story is everything you have grown to love about the Hap and Leonard books but the narrator makes it difficult to get through. All of his character voices sound the same even for the female characters. So much so that you can not tell who is talking in the story until he says the name. Which makes dialogue between characters really annoying. A good narrator can make a good book great and a ok book good. But the opposite is also true. A bad narrator can turn a good book, bad.

Fair story

Not his best work. Seemed a little bit of a stretch to be asked to believe.

Another Dose of Vanilla Ride

if you are new to Hap and Leonard, welcome. Joe R. Lansdale puts a real Texas twang into this episodic story of the two Do-Gooders. It's the usual witty banter that you cannot read anywhere else. So many homespun similes, and smart-ass wisecracks. As usual, the boys get tangled up in helping to right the wrongs of the world. It gets violent, there is gunplay and hired killer Vanilla Ride retuns to help Hap settle things. The narration is not as polished as the last few books, as the voices run together. Start at book one and eventually get to this one.

Narrator Phil Gigante is better --

It's not that JD Jackson is a bad reader--he just doesn't distinguish between voices very well. I'm often not sure if it's Hap or Leonard speaking because their voices are so similar. And there's not much difference when it's Brett or any of the other characters either. There is never a doubt when Phil narrates. I finally had to stop resenting the voice similarities and just let the story wash over me. Admittedly, I'm not finished with it yet, but I didn't want to forget to let my comments about JD Jackson go unsaid.

terrible narrator

good story, but very hard to get into because the narrator didn't change the voices, inflection, or seem to put in much effort. made the story dull.