I've been devouring Joe R. Lansdale's 'Hap and Leonard' stories for a while now at the rate of one per month and I've often wondered how I'd have experienced them had I started out in 1990 with 'Savage Season'. After all, I bought my paperback copy soon after that but prioritised other titles. How would I have received the series had I grown alongside them? Lansdale has mentioned in forewords that he ensures that his lead characters continue to grow older as their adventures roll on, but they tend to fail to age during the gaps between those adventures, of which there have been quite a few. In other words, while I'd have been younger than them in 1990, that's not really the case anymore.

One reason I'm happy to have started late is that there are so many entries in the series that aren't straightforward novels that I could have picked up at my local bookseller in paperback for the cover price. The novels, sure, just as I could pick them up off Lansdale's table at a con or order them from Amazon today. But, especially late in the series, during the 2010s after the eighth novel, 'Devil Red', there are a bundle of novellas that tended to see print in limited collector's editions that remained in print for about five minutes each and cost twice or three times the typical paperback novel. I'm a very happy man that, as I bumped into these in my runthrough, they started showing up in different form.

And that's where this book comes in. 'Born for Trouble' is the second collection of such material to be published by Tachyon, after 'Of Mice and Minestrone', and they're serious moneysavers. That initial collection covered the early years of Hap and Leonard, with only a little crossover to the stories that found new use in the mosaic novel Blood and Lemonade. This trawls in the rest, meaning that a new reader to the series can simply pick up two collections in trade paperback form instead of having to track down an ever-elusive set of out of print collectable editions at inflated prices.

I've already reviewed three of the five pieces to be found here and, with perfect timing, I've added a fourth this month, which leaves only one that's new to me, a short story called 'Sad Onions' that was originally published in an anthology, 'Odd Partners', edited by bestselling author Anne Perry, to look at unlikely pairs of investigators solving cases. Even after so many 'Hap and Leonard' titles, I have to say that they're still an unlikely pair, though Lansdale has made them feel like they were destined to be friends, cursed to have so many adventures dumped on them but blessed with the talents to take care of them anyway.

'Sad Onions' is yet another one of those adventures, into which Hap and Leonard literally drive. They were on their way back from a fishing trip when they almost ran into a woman waving her arms in the middle of the road. She's a young woman but her elderly husband's trapped in a car that's run off the road, not that he cares much at this point because he's also dead. And that would be that, except for the itching at the back of Hap's brain because something doesn't ring true.

I liked this one, though it's as uncomplicated as the short story length might suggest. Sad Onions, as I know you're wondering, is the name of this recently departed gentleman's company, which makes an impressive range of crisps, or chips to you Americans, each made from a different vegetable in dried-out form. Frank Parker was seventy, while his wife Terri is twenty-five. You're already connecting the dots and you wouldn't be far away, but there's a little more to it than that.

'Sad Onions' is actually the most recent piece included, as 'Odd Partners' came out in 2019. 'Hoodoo Harry', the oldest novella, saw release in 2016, with 'Coco Butternut' following a year later. From the same year as 'Hoodoo Harry', there's also the only novelette in the series, 'Briar Patch Boogie' and I've already reviewed each of these here at the Nameless Zine as part of my runthrough of 'Hap and Leonard' stories, so I won't revisit them here. The book wraps with 'Cold Cotton', the novella that was coincidentally on my radar for March anyway, so again is reviewed separately. Again, I'm thankful for this volume, because otherwise I'd have had to spring for an e-book, which I'd prefer not to do, as I'm always about the physical media. And hey, how would I get Joe to sign an e-book?

I do wonder, given the presence here of an anthology story and the credits in 'Blood and Lemonade' a month ago, how many other 'Hap and Leonard' stories there are floating around. I can't imagine too many of them, though, so I don't expect another Tachyon collection, at least for a while. Lansdale has been busy with his most popular creations of late, releasing four novels, plus a mosaic novel, a trio of novellas and a novelette since 2016, plus however many short stories fit alongside 'Sad Onions' within that timeframe. I'm sure he'll be writing more and Tachyon will be paying attention. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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