Leather Maiden [Hardcover]

Cason Statler is an Iraqi War vet returned home to Camp Rapture, Texas. Before his time in the service -- he signed up for Afghanistan after 9/11 but was shipped to Iraq, go figure! -- Cason was a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, so the local paper is happy to hire the "local boy made good" as a columnist.

Cason is wondering if there'll be anything to write about in such a slow town when he comes across the notes left by his predecessor (best known for her weekly survey of local garden insects) regarding the unsolved disappearance of teenager Caroline Allison.

Meanwhile, Cason struggles with the return to his hometown, among other things: living at home with his parents again in the wake of his more successful brother; a drinking problem that may or may not be out of hand; and being dumped by the girlfriend whose presence helped see him through the war. When Cason's brother's reputation is threatened by blackmailers, the two of them have to work together as a sort of private detective/vigilante team, and Cason learns that his brother has weaknesses too. Including one that connects him to the Allison girl.

Nearing the end of his third decade as a horror and crime fiction author, Joe R. Lansdale (winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for The Bottoms, and more Bram Stoker Awards than you can count on one hand) is still topping himself with each new novel, singling himself out with his particular style of down-home noir.

Leather Maiden combines Lansdale's talents for mystery plotting, quirky but realistic characterizations, colloquial dialogue that doesn't resort to dialect, and an intense portrayal of the dark and light of daily life in the rural South that can only come from a native. The result of this is a novel that offers emotional depth and authenticity along with a fun read. I wrote that Lost Echoes, Lansdale's previous novel, was "very likely the best thing he has ever written." Leather Maiden may be even better.

You know what a pleasure is in store for you from the first page of "Leather Maiden," the newest book from Joe Lansdale, upon being introduced to Cason Statler. He is returning to Camp Rapture, where his parents and his brother and sister-in-law still live, an old timber town in East Texas where he grew up and where is now moving back, after stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he earned some medals, and a newspaper job in Houston, where he earned a Pulitzer nomination, all of which have had a profound effect on his psyche.

The author's description of Cason's entry into town: "It was a bright day, the sunlight like a burst egg yolk running all over the sidewalk and through the yards, almost snuffing out the grass with its heated glory, and causing everything to be warm and appear fresh, even the houses on the poor side of town from which ancient coats of basic white peeled like stripping sunburn." After his first day back, he sits outside his parents' house and "leaned back and looked up at the stars. They were shiny and bright, and there was something right about the heavens that made me want to live forever. I had had that feeling before. It never lasted."

Cason has come back to interview for a job as a journalist on the local Camp Rapture Report, a far cry from the paper from which he was fired in Houston, after screwing up his life there with his excessive drinking and other, quite personal dalliances, he is happy to be hired there as a columnist. Trying to find something to interest him, he finds notes made by his predecessor on a cold case, that of the disappearance of a spectacularly beautiful girl six months prior, a 23-year-old history major at the University. He feels that story is ripe for a series of articles about "the illusion of safety in a small town." He despondently feels it might be the only interesting thing he'd ever get to write about there. Though he is warned by the police chief that "there isn't any such thing as a quiet town, unless maybe there are two people in it and one of them is dead." After the first article runs he finds he has stirred up reactions that perhaps would have better been left undisturbed, and there are some personal implications for Cason.

The portrait painted by the author is very evocative: "The sun was falling into the trees and it looked like a peeled red plum coming apart. A flock of black birds was moving from one tree to the other as my car startled them. They moved so well in tight formation they appeared to be a wind-blown cloud of crude oil. Finally they had had enough and broke over the trees and flew into the face of the dying sun, black freckles on a bright red face."

The portrait of small-town America is well-drawn, mostly dormant but still persistent racial tensions realistically depicted. The writing and the characters are original; particularly Cason's "friend" with the quaint nickname "Booger," who served with him in Iraq and saved his life more than once and now owns a gun range and a bar, and of whom he says the following: "I call Booger a friend, but I'm not really sure I mean it. He may be more of an attachment, like a growth of some sort. It was like I told Dad. I want to get rid of him, cut him out, but there are complications and attachments. . . . I suppose it's our Iraq connection. That kind of thing, making war together, gives us a link; sometimes, for me, that link is like a ball and chain. Booger, in many ways, has yet to quit fighting the war. Originally, he moved his inborn hatred of just about everybody from Oklahoma to Iraq, and now that he was home again, shooting squirrels and deer didn't do it anymore. He kept hoping they'd call him back to Iraq. He liked the smell of blood, the charred odor of burning corpses. He liked being shot at. He told me so. He was that soldier that gave the rest of us a bad name." Reminiscent of Elvis Cole's "Joe Pike," Spenser's "Hawk" and Myron Bolitar's "Win," he is not a character the reader will easily forget.

The story is suspenseful and in between the murder and blackmail it is laced with humor, some of the laugh-out-loud variety. But don't let that fool you. The author steadily builds the suspense as the tale progresses, till you find yourself holding your breath as the conclusion nears. And just when you think you can take a deep breath he has another stunning twist in store. Mr. Lansdale has written another quirky and fast-paced novel, one which will keep the reader guessing and hugely entertained right through to the last page.

I loved this book. Great characters. Tense. Funny. Shocking. Surprising.
Joe Lansdale has done it again. Well worth the money. Highly recommended.
Also recommend: THE BOTTOMS, by Lansdale. SUNSET AND SAWDUST, by Lansdale
DIRTY WHITE BOYS, by Stephen Hunter.