To the casual genre fan, Joe Lansdale is best known for the novella Bubba Ho-Tep — which was adapted in 2002 by Don Coscarelli (Phantasm, John Dies At the End). However, the “Champion Mojo Storyteller”, as his website calls him, also has a deep love and history in the crime/thriller genre, and it’s on full display in the new novella “Hot In December”, released by Dark Regions Press.
WRITTEN BY: Joe R. Lansdale
PUBLISHED: Dark Regions Press
PRICE: $14.95 (trade paperback)
RELEASE DATE: December 3, 2013
Described in the press release as “in the vein of Dean Koontz and Lee Child”, Hot in December tells the story of Tom Chan, a war veteran, who witnesses a brutal hit-and-run in his small, East Texas town of LaBorde. He talks to the police, only to learn that the driver he saw is Will Anthony, son of crime lord Pye Anthony. When the father-and-son team lean on Tom, kidnap his wife, and terrorize his family, Tom sees no choice but to enlist the help of some vet friends — a reporter by the name of Cason and a sometime-gun-range owner and all-the-time sociopath Booger — to help save his and his family’s lives.
The best crime fiction is lean, taut, and paced at roughly break-neck speed, and Lansdale knows this very well. It’s entirely possible to have expanded this to full novel length — with further development of Chan’s time at war, a slower and more complex stacking of intimidation from the Anthonys — but it was wise of Lansdale not to. “December” begins and ends exactly where it should and anything that is not directly important to the telling of this particular situation is cheerfully tossed out the window. Not to be too horror-centric, but it reminds the reader of Stephen King’s novel “The Running Man” (written as Richard Bachman) due to its full-out sprint of story, story, story.
This is not Lansdale’s first foray into the crime genre. Since 1990, he’s written a series of thrillers centered around two characters, Hap and Leonard, also based in LaBorde. The beats of the story are spot-on, the characterizations sketched out rather than laboriously drawn (in the best Elmore Leonard/Richard Stark crime fiction, the characters are too busy getting their loot/saving their asses to spend hours pontificating on why they did this, that, or the other thing), the pauses tense, and the crescendos satisfying.
The publisher likens this to the writing of Koontz and Child, which is not altogether fair—to Lansdale. The hero of Lee Child’s most famous work, Jack Reacher, shares little in common with Lansdale’s everyman, Tom Chan, other than they’re both ex-military.
However, the problem of “Hot In December” is common coin in the currency of Koontz– characterization. Koontz has a tendency of creating boring towns that literally exist to be torn apart, populated with people that are interchangeable. Lansdale’s LaBorde doesn’t suffer Same Bland Town Syndrome – it’s obvious it has history due to the references Lansdale casually throws off – but he does run to the edge in his character sketching that borders on being interchangeable. This is highlighted with Cason, Tom’s reporter friend and the person Tom goes to when he begins to suspect the police are in with the Anthony’s. After a brief introduction at the beginning, and the explanation of “burner” cell phones, Cason serves no real purpose to the story, doesn’t help push it further. After connecting Tom with Booger, Cason could have sketched a salute and wished them well–and with slight rewriting, Cason could’ve been eliminated entirely.
This is the trap within crime fiction–because of the propulsion of the plot, the character sketches have to be spot-on and immediate and each player must push the story forward or get lost in the shuffle. But, for all of that, even that kind of now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t characterization of Cason doesn’t hinder the overall success of “Hot In December”. The novella is written and sized to be read briskly, with little stop – perfect for long road trips or waits – and Lansdale is brutal in shoving the reader deeper and deeper into Tom’s troubles. By the time you hit page 3, you will keep turning until the final page.
“Hot In December” is available online in print and ebook.
4/5 Skulls
Reviewed By Paul Anderson
Paul Anderson is the Editor-in-Chief of Jamais Vu, which debuts this January from Post Mortem Press. For Bloody Disgusting, he’s previously interviewed Harlan Ellison and Paul Chadwick, and reviewed 7 Against Chaos.