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Things Get Ugly: The Best Crime Fiction of Joe R. Lansdale Paperback – August 15, 2023
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“Pulpy, blackly humorous, compulsively readable, and somehow both wildly surreal and down-to-earth. Lansdale is a national fucking treasure.”
―Christa Faust, author of Money Shot
In the 1950s, a young small-town projectionist mixes it up with a violent gang. When Mr. Bear is not alerting us to the dangers of forest fires, he lives a life of debauchery and murder. A brother and sister travel to Oklahoma to recover the dead body of their uncle. A lonely man engages in dubious acts while pining for his rubber duckie.
In this collection of nineteen unforgettable crime tales, Joe R. Lansdale brings his legendary mojo and gritty, dark humor to harrowing heists, revenge, homicide, and mayhem. No matter how they begin, things are bound to get ugly―and fast.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherTachyon Publications
- Publication dateAugust 15, 2023
- Dimensions6.14 x 0.88 x 8.96 inches
- ISBN-101616963964
- ISBN-13978-1616963965
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Editorial Reviews
Review
―Alex Segura, bestselling author of Secret Identity
“Wildly entertaining, binge-worthy, and a total escape from hum drum reality, Things Get Ugly is pure Joe Lansdale on terrific display.”
―May Cobb, author of The Hunting Wives
“Of all my writing, the short story is my favorite form of expression,” says Lansdale, and his joy shows in the exuberant invention of these noirish tales. A few of them, like ‘The Steel Valentine’ and ‘Six-Finger Jack,’ are unpredictable but routine, and a few others, like the spooky ‘The Shadows, Kith and Kin’ and the supernatural 1958 private eye story ‘Dead Sister,’ play more to Lansdale’s wide-ranging interests than to his storytelling strengths. But even entries that don’t entirely come off, from ‘Mr. Bear’ (a man develops a surprising friendship with the psycho bear who sits next to him on a plane) to ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ (a pair of kids who ‘feed off each other’ descend into a pit of sex, drugs, and depravity), are fueled by some wildly deranged premises, and the best of them, like the supershort ‘The Job’ (an Elvis impersonator is hired as a hit man) and ‘The Ears’ (a third date is spun into a nightmare by a casual discovery), strike a note of giddy brutality other authors would find hard to match.”
―Kirkus
“Lansdale’s writing hits like a brass-knuckled punch to the face: Hard and nasty and visceral. This collection of nineteen ugly stories shows the master of the crime thriller at the height of his formidable powers.”
―Marc Guggenheim, creator of Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow
“The spiritual heir to both Walt Whitman and Elmore Leonard, Joe R. Lansdale is the bard who sings America: in gem-hard, polished prose that never lets up, no matter how ugly things get.”
―Lavie Tidhar, author of Central Station and Neom
“Trust the English language to observe as closely as Joe's line, ‘thin and flexible as a feather.’ The man can write.”
―Justin Scott, author of the Ben Abbott mysteries
“Things Get Ugly burns like backwoods moonshine going down. A best of Joe R. Lansdale is a best of the genre―full stop.”
―Eric Beetner, author of There and Back
“Things Get Ugly is my favorite kind of collection.... Highly recommended.”
―Fantasy & Science Fiction
“[Things Get Ugly] assembles nineteen of his best crime stories and is a real delight for any genre fan and lover of strong, dark fiction.”
―Gumshoe Review
“One of my favorite things about reading Joe Lansdale at all is the sense that anything could happen at any point―that genre restrictions don't really matter that much.”
―Umney’s Alley
“As Matt Damon’s character Sonny Vaccaro says in his final climactic pitch to Michael Jordan in Air, ‘the rest of us just want a chance to touch that greatness.’ When you read Things Get Ugly, you will do just that.”
―Strand Magazine
“Prepare yourself to get lost in one of the best collections of crime fiction I’ve ever read.”
―Dave Writes and Draws
“I found this book to be disturbing and insane, yet somewhat thrilling.”
―Real World According to Sam
“Joe R. Lansdale has written hundreds of short stories but these are the cream of the crop! Highly recommended!”
―GeorgeKelly.org
“My favorite aspect of Lansdale’s work is his sense of humor; he makes the goriest details hilarious. It’s a gift.”
―Dayton
Praise for Joe R. Lansdale
“A folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.”
―New York Times Book Review
“An American original.”
―Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box
“A terrifically gifted storyteller.”
―Washington Post Book Review
“Like gold standard writers Elmore Leonard and the late Donald Westlake, Joe R. Lansdale is one of the more versatile writers in America.”
―Los Angeles Times
“Lansdale’s been hailed, at varying points in his career, as the new Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner-gone-madder, and the last surviving splatterpunk.”
―Austin Chronicle
“There are writers who are prolific and writers who are brilliant: Joe R. Lansdale is one of the few who is both.”
―Christopher Farnsworth, author of Blood Oath
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Joe R. Lansdale
These stories were written over the course of my career. There are other crime stories I'm quite fond of that didn't end up here, but a book can only be so long. I'd love for there to be in a second volume of my crime stories. Some of the stories we left out are better known than these, but for this volume, these were mine and the editor's choices. As a way of throwing that editor a well deserved bone―hell, let's make it an entire fresh carcass, his name is Rick Klaw.
I should also note that some of my favorite short crime stories include my series characters, Hap and Leonard. I'm especially fond of those in Blood and Lemonade and Of Mice and Minestrone. These stories show them in their youth. Mostly Hap. None of those ended up here, because both of those volumes, as well as two others, Hap and Leonard and Born for Trouble, are still in print from Tachyon. I invite you to check them out.
I don't love labels, but I do love packaging my stories for new readers. Some of these hit the crime classification securely enough, and others, not so much. But they can all be easily justified as crime stories. I like to think there's no question they are good stories.
I'll let the reader decide.
I will also say that if you have a lot of my collections, you may have most of these already. But new readers may want to find an available volume that collects the best of them. Older readers may like the idea of a fresh volume with a few they don't have.
I'm proud of these.
I hope you enjoy them.
Product details
- Publisher : Tachyon Publications (August 15, 2023)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1616963964
- ISBN-13 : 978-1616963965
- Item Weight : 13 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.14 x 0.88 x 8.96 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #148,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,391 in Small Town & Rural Fiction (Books)
- #1,687 in Short Stories Anthologies
- #3,843 in Short Stories (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies.
Lansdale has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others.
A major motion picture based on Lansdale's crime thriller Cold in July was released in May 2014, starring Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Sam Shepard (Black Hawk Down), and Don Johnson (Miami Vice). His novella Bubba Hotep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror." He is currently co-producing a TV series, "Hap and Leonard" for the Sundance Channel and films including The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero.
Lansdale is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.
S.A. Cosby is the New York Times national best selling award-winning author from Southeastern Virginia. His books include MY DARKEST PRAYER, Blacktop Wasteland, Amazon's #1 Mystery and Thriller of the Year and #3 Best Book of 2020 overall, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, Winner of the LA Times Book Award for Mystery or Thrillers and a Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinalist and the winner of the ITW award for hard cover book of the year, the Macavity for best novel of the year, the Anthony, The Barry , a honorable mention from the ALA Black Caucus and was a finalists for the CWA Golden Dagger. He is also author of the best selling RAZORBLADE TEARS which also won the Anthony, The Barry , The Macivity and The ITW award and The Dashiell Hammett award. His book ALL THE SINNERS BLEED was nominated for The Lefty The Edgar and The LA Times Book award and The ALA book award
His short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, and his story "Slant-Six" was selected as a Distinguished Story in Best American Mystery Stories for 2016. His short story "The Grass Beneath My Feet" won the Anthony Award for Best Short Story in 2019.his short story NOT MY CROSS TO BEAR won the Anthony in 2022.
His writing has been called "gritty and heartbreaking" and "dark, thrilling and tragic" and "raw ,emotional and profound "
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Admittedly, this is my first experience with Joe R. Lansdale, and I think the title of this anthology—Things Get Ugly—says it all. I imagine that Lansdale’s fans accept this kind of writing from him. Those that don’t accept it—well, it’s their loss in my opinion.
Someone once said that it takes much longer to write a short letter than to write a long letter. I agree with this. However, I don’t think that fully applies to short stories and novels. But I definitely think that being a great short story writer takes a skillset beyond that used by average novelists. There is much less time for character development, less time to immerse a reader in a scene, and good pacing becomes something much harder to achieve.
I’m sure this is likely true of his other anthologies, but Things Get Ugly is a masterclass on short story writing. The story Dead Sister, for example, has some wonderful pacing. It’s a classic gumshoe tale with a supernatural twist. The author gets to the climax somewhat quickly, but then he prolongs that climax with the addition of a small disaster.
Santa at the Café is another great story! What I enjoyed the most was the number of plot twists that the author could squeeze into it.
I previously mentioned that this author does not worry about being politically correct, nor does he seem to worry about offending his readers. As I said, if you’re a fan, you accept this. For example, in one story two men are sent to beat up a grade school girl to teach a lesson to the girl’s father. Another story has a young man and his younger sister hauling the two-week-old corpse of their uncle in the back seat of their car during a Texas summer. (The description the author uses in that story is pretty ripe, I’ll tell you!) Another story touches on necrophilia.
Before each story, the author has a little blurb about how he came to write the following story. Maybe this is meant to show that some of the “subject matter” of the stories actually had some meaning to them. (That’s just a guess.)
I think my favorite story is Mr. Bear. In this story, there is a bear. But this bear is somewhat of a celebrity, and he walks and talks and does pretty much everything a human does, including having sex with humans. It turns out that the bear is somewhat despicable. I can understand how a story like this can ruffle some feathers (or fur, as the case may be), but I just tell myself that it’s only a story. Complete fiction—obviously. Some of the things they do in cartoons are also somewhat despicable if you take them out of context.
These short stories may not be fully enjoyed by everyone, but if you’re game to give this book a read and you have the thick skin to accept the innards at face value, I can say without any hesitation that you’ll enjoy it!
You don’t have to like the horror genre, or the explicit gore that often pops up in his suspense, to appreciate the scope of his talent. In fact, I’m a reader who doesn’t particularly care for horror or graphic violence, but I can recognize, and appreciate, craft that is used so well, and I’ve enjoyed several of Lansdale’s books before this one.
Lansdale doesn’t pull away from tough stuff. Not human depravity. Not graphic violence. Not graphic sex. But he presents that to the reader in stories that pull you in, along with characters not easily forgotten. Then there are the descriptions that rise so far above the ordinary. A good example is this from the story Rainy Day. “The man shook the cigarette out, lit it and puffed. Smoke went up and over the man’s head and sucked out the window, as if it were in a hurry and had some important place to go.”
The first book of Lansdale’s that I read was The Bottoms, and I could see why it won The Edgar. It’s still one of my favorites. I’ll admit that I haven’t read all of his books as I don’t enjoy the ones that focus heavily on horror elements, but I could never fault the writing. His novels and short stories run a gamut of topics and styles and it’s always a pleasure to dig into one to see what’s in the offing. Lansdale can write in almost any genre and pull it off.
Every story in Things Get Ugly has some kind of twist, or two, and Santa in the Cafe had so many I felt like a pretzel after reading it. Never saw the surprise at the ending coming, but I should have, knowing how Lansdale likes to toss in a zinger just when you think the story is over. That was one of my favorites in this collection.
I also really enjoyed Driving to Geronimo’s Grave, a story that has two young kids driving a dilapidated old car to Oklahoma to pick up Uncle Smat’s dead body that is currently residing in a hen house. Set in the Depression Era, the time and place were an integral part of the story, and it was laced with humor that had me chuckling. That mix of sardonic wit and dipping into the dark side of humanity is a specialty of Lansdale’s.
Driving to Geronimo’s Grave wasn’t so much a horror story as a suspense, and maybe that’s why I liked it best of all the stories in this collection. If you’ve yet to give his books a try, I highly recommend starting with this one. Then maybe picking up The Bottoms and work your way down his list of published work.
Thanks to NetGalley and Lone Star Literary for a chance to read an ARC of this book.