When Leonard Pine's Uncle Chester dies, Leonard is not expecting to inherit. But it seems that $100,000, a house and its contents have all been left to him, along with a mysterious key which doesn't seem to fit anything in the house. However when Leonard and Hap move in to repair the old place, they discover a crack house next door and, far worse, the skeleton of a child, hidden in a trunk underneath the floorboards. It seems that Uncle Chester's life was not exactly the way Leonard and Hap imagined it to be...

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Off to garibaldisghost who won it in 'Author beginning with L' bookswap game on bcuk extra.

Safely received, ta - looks a good 'un!

A humurous, clever and multi-layered story with 2 or 3 great characters, which I did enjoy. There were a couple of interesting twists in the plot and it sort of worked out as excpected in the end.

I'm adding a couple of other books by this author to my wishlist as I quite like his style.

Sent on its travels to a fellow Bookobsessed member who recently chose it from the Mystery VBB - enjoy!

Received in the mail today and look forward to reading it. Thanks for sending it.

Received via Bookmooch.com. Thanks for sending this. I enjoy Lansdale and especially the Hap and Leonard books!

This is book 2 in the Hap & Leonard series by Lansdale. I've been reading these on and off for a few years but somehow missed reading this one. I was also a fan of the cancelled TV series and I did see season two of the series which was based on Mucho Mojo. This came out in 2017 so I didn't remember a lot of the details but the book brought a lot of it back to me.



When Leonard's Uncle Chester dies, he leaves him a house. Leonard decides to fix it up along with Hap's help which leads to the discovery of a chest under the floorboards which contains the decimated body of a young boy along with some kiddie porn mags. So was Uncle Chester the monster this appears to make him? Leonard doesn't think so and seeks to find out how and why the body got there. This leads to a decades old case where young boys have disappeared and possibly been killed. The disappearances seem to happen during August every year and may involve a Baptist preacher.

This book introduces several characters that appear in later novels including the beautiful Florida Grange who has an affair with Hap and becomes their lawyer, and Lt. Marvin Hanson the only black cop in town. The novel is also filled with Lansdale's usual violence and racial epithets and is not for the easily offended. But as usual, I really enjoyed this one and will be looking forward to reading more in the series. I've already read up to the fifth book, Rumble Tumble, and hopefully will get to the next one, Captains Outrageous soon.

Including in the Paperback Surprise Bookbox Round 9. Enjoy!

Chosen from Surprise Paperback bookbox Round 9. Thanks for including.

Hap & Leonard are amazing characters! Lots of twists and turns to the plot. The book was hard to put down. I wish I had read Lansdale's first book.

Flying off the shelves on a RABCK adventure to Booklady331. Thanks for helping!

This arrived in a box yesterday. Thank you so much for sharing. I will pass this one along.

Enjoy! KTM for Oh, the Places You Can Go Release Challenge 2021 -- Mojo, Ethiopia, Much, Germany