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With the odds firmly against them, the sinister case builds up to an enjoyably blood-splattered finale.Īs ever, Lansdale makes the volatile concoction of dark humour, stomach-churning violence and off-beat characterisation look easy – and it really isn’t.

The mystery itself is gripping and the book even explores how the duo cope when they are prised apart, exposed and vulnerable. The story is tough and fast-paced, buoyed by Lansdale’s effervescent storytelling and razor-sharp one-liners. Hap and Leonard may be thoroughly unsuited to work as private investigators, but they are perfectly capable of butting heads with anyone complicating their quest for answers. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely! Devil Red is a fantastic entry in a fantastic series. Spurred on by my belated viewing of the superb TV adaptation of the (sadly cancelled) Hap and Leonard TV show, I finally tracked down a copy of Devil Red – more than a decade after its initial release.

I tore through the first seven books in the Hap and Leonard series many years ago, only for my fun to be derailed when Devil Red wasn’t readily available in the UK. Not for the first time, the boys find themselves entering a world of pain. Events take another sinister turn, when Hap and Leonard establish that a red devil’s head was painted on a tree near the crime scene – and this symbol has been daubed elsewhere, at the scenes of other unsolved crimes. Ominously, the female victim, Mini, was associated with a local vampire cult – the leader of which is now serving jail time for murder. As they dig into the matter at hand, they realise that both victims were set to inherit some serious money. When ex-cop turned private investigator Marvin Hanson asks his buddies Hap Collins and Leonard Pine to look into a cold case for him, they are happy to oblige – and keen to sink their teeth into a case that doesn’t start with baseball bats and end with broken bones.