I'm closing in on the end of Joe R. Lansdale's celebrated 'Hap and Leonard' series but I have a couple of novels left to go and, before them, this return to novella length. 'Cold Cotton' runs eighty pages or so and covers much of the ground we might expect after eleven novels, four novellas, one novelette and a string of short stories. Well, except for one thing. We start out in bed with Hap and Brett, with the former uncharacteristically unable to get it up. His doctor can't find anything physically wrong so he recommends a therapist. After all, as Hap so memorably puts it, "I had some real shit in my lunch pail."

And, because 'Hap and Leonard' stories can spark anywhere, it's here that we truly begin because, as Hap wonders whether he's actually going to call Carol Cotton, therapist, Carol Cotton, therapist, calls Hap, because she believes that her life is in danger and she could do with his services. She's received a lot of threats lately, crude ones that she's tended to ignore, but they're now including photos taken within the high walls of her not inconsiderable compound. Clearly, they should be taken seriously and that's what she's doing.

This isn't the most complex 'Hap and Leonard' story I've ever read, but it changes as it grows. From a set of threats to straightforward blackmail to murder, the stakes keep on growing and the likely list of suspects oddly does likewise. This isn't an Agatha Christie murder mystery, where we're given the suspects straight off the bat and we have to whittle them down, this one is a more realistic, organic mystery where our investigators follow the leads, adjust as people die and end up where they should to wrap up the case. You're not going to guess whodunit two pages in.

The characters are memorable, which is something I shouldn't be surprised at, given how many such memorable characters have populated the series thus far. However, I am getting more surprised with each of these stories, because you might think that Lansdale would surely have to repeat himself by this point, but he keeps it fresh. Dr. Cotton is more memorable for what she's done, thus prompting those blackmail demands, than who she is, but there's background that feels new. Sugar Muffin and Pookie are memorable for who they are, especially the former, who gets a neat red herring entrance to the story. It's appropriate, too, for each of them to be memorable the way they are because of this one starting out as psychology.

I've mentioned before how I've come to prefer the novels in this series to the novellas, because many of the latter feel like they would have been better served as the former, if only Lansdale had added a layer or two of complexity to them. This one goes against that thought, because it does what it does in the time it takes to do it and it really wouldn't benefit from any extra pages. It's not a thin novel and it's not a drawn-out short story. It's exactly what it should be for the story that it's telling. This is exactly what novellas are for.

And, really, there's not a lot more to tell, without giving something away. OK, I'll spoil the final page: Hap gets his libido back. But that's it. The rest you have to read yourself. Fortunately, while this one, like the other novellas in the series, was published only in a Kindle edition by Crossroad Press, it has now been collected into 'Born for Trouble', released this month by Tachyon, alongside a couple of the other recent novellas, 'Coco Butternut' and 'Hoodoo Harry', that novelette, "Briar Patch Boogie' and a short story called 'Sad Onions'.

Next for me is the penultimate novel in the series, unless Lansdale knocks another one out before we get to May. It's 'Jackrabbit Smile', 'Hap and Leonard' novel number twelve, and it looks like a trip. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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