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LEATHER MAIDEN
by Joe R Lansdale
Vintage , August 2009
304 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 0375719237


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

If there is such a thing as a good war, Cason (Cason, not Jason) Statler did not have one in Iraq. Now he is back in his East Texas hometown of Camp Rapture, drinking way too much and mooning after his veterinarian ex-wife. She thinks he is stalking her and she is not far wrong. Before he went into the army, Cason had been a big-city reporter and had even been nominated for a Pulitzer, which he did not get. On the strength of his past brush with glory, he lands a job on the local paper, owned and operated by a woman who seems fixed in the past, at least as far as race goes.

Cason is set to work producing a weekly column and encouraged to take a look at whatever the previous columnist left behind when she left. Among the notes for columns on recipes and stain removal, he finds references to the disappearance of a young woman who went out to the Taco Bell one night and was never seen again. Caroline Allison was a student in the same department that Cason's brother teaches in and before long it becomes all too abundantly clear that Caroline and brother Jimmy had a relationship that was not academic.

There is, unfortunately, visual proof of the affair and the inevitable blackmail attempt follows quickly on. Although Cason has the usual resentment of the unsuccessful brother for his perfect sibling, blood is thicker than water, so he does what he can to help Jimmy out of trouble.

Up to this point, the book had me hooked. The first-person narration was pitch-perfect, the language inventive and very funny, the secondary characters, though eccentric, were not over the top. And then the plot kicked in, about two-thirds of the way through the book. What unfolds is a bizarre serial killer story that hangs by its fingernails to the possible and sometimes loses its grip. It is, happily, over rather quickly, but not before the reader is treated to some gothic detail that is a considerable distance away from the generally ironic tone of the first part of the novel.

Perhaps I am excessively squeamish, but I was very drawn to the character of Cason as he tries to get his life going in a forward direction. With him, Lansdale seems to strike exactly the right note of modern Southern noir. To sacrifice all that for some cheap thrills, a climax reminiscent of The Perils of Pauline, and a final twist in which the long arm of coincidence stretches several yards beyond the plausible made me feel rather badly let down.

Reviewed by Yvonne Klein, November 2009

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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