The Donut Legion: A Novel

by Joe R. Lansdale Narrated by Joe R. Lansdale, Kasey Lansdale, Finlay Stevenson, January LaVoy, Marc Vietor, Greg Littlefield, Brad Sanders

Overview

Edgar award-winning author Joe R. Lansdale beams a light on an East Texas town held in the grip of conspiracy.
Charlie Garner has a bad feeling. His ex-wife, Meg, has been missing for over a week and one quick peek into her home shows all her possessions packed up in boxes. Neighbors claim she's running from bill collectors, but Charlie suspects something more sinister is afoot. Meg was last seen working at the local donut shop, a business run by a shadow group most refer to as `The Saucer People'; a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming.
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Along with his brother, Felix, and beautiful, randy journalist Amelia “Scrappy” Moon, Charlie uncovers strange and frightening details about the compound (read: a massive, doomsday storehouse of weapons, a leashed chimpanzee!) When the body of their key informer is found dead with his arms ripped out of their sockets, Charlie knows he's in danger but remains dogged in his quest to rescue Meg.
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Brimming with colorful characters and Lansdale's characteristic bounce, this rollicking crime novel examines the insidious rise of fringe groups and those under their sway with black comedy and glints of pathos.

Editorial Reviews

MAY 2023 - AudioFile

As Joe R. Lansdale portrays ex-private eye Charlie Garner, he gives the role a Mike Hammer flavor with a Texas twang. The appearance--and disappearance--of Garner's ex-wife sends him on the trail of a cult that is linked to donut shops. He gets help from his brother, Felix, voiced in a chiding tone by Greg Littlefield; a writer nicknamed Scrappy, voiced with a gung-ho attitude and a touch of combativeness by Finlay Stevenson; and Felix's girlfriend, Cherry, a lawyer who is voiced with skepticism and the occasional touch of anger by January LaVoy. Their investigation runs afoul of Police Chief Stone, voiced by Brad Sanders. Even fans of the hard-boiled detective genre will enjoy the surprising humor brought to this mystery by Lansdale and the rest of the cast. J.A.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Publishers Weekly

12/05/2022

In this wildly funny if uneven crime yarn from Edgar winner Lansdale (Moon Lake), PI-turned-novelist Charlie Garner is confronted by an apparition of his ex-wife, Meg, at his home in east Texas, who warns him to “beware the great mound within the circle.” Unnerved by this ghostly visitation and still holding feelings for his former spouse, he stops by her apartment complex in nearby May Town, but discovers that she and her new husband have mysteriously disappeared. With the aid of his brawny older brother, Felix, who runs a private detective agency, Charlie explores Meg’s connection to the doughnut store where she worked and to UFO fanatics who worship a local site where it’s believed a flying saucer is buried. Shocking revelations and a spate of grisly deaths spur Charlie to get to the bottom of Meg’s disappearance, no matter how hazardous the quest. Though sluggish in places, sharp dialogue and outlandish characters, like the dastardly Cowboy and his flamboyantly dressed chimpanzee, Mr. Biggs, make this high-spirited conspiracy especially enjoyable. Lansdale reliably delivers the goods. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

"A breathlessly paced, suspenseful novel, revealing the dark underbelly of cults, and people's enduring fascination with the supernatural. Populated by his one-of-a-kind characters, Lansdale, with his signature humor and empathy, peels back the layers of bluster and hype, exposing the seductive and dangerous nature of predatory sects.”—Kathleen Kent, author of THE DIME

"The Donut Legion struck a crazy chord in my heart. Joe Lansdale employs his signature dark humor to shine a supremely strange and unflinchingly honest light on our present-day madness. Known for his colorful characters, Lansdale outdoes himself with this motley crew. Fingers crossed more Garner Brother books are on the way!"—Eli Cranor, author of DON’T KNOW TOUGH

“Joe R. Lansdale’s THE DONUT LEGION centers around a writer searching for his missing ex-wife with the help of his private dick brother and a wannabe journalist, diving headlong into the bowels of a flying-saucer cult and their sketchy donut shop front. It’s a full-tilt blast, shot through with Lansdale’s searching humanism and deft touch. His East Texas brims with weirdness. Vibrant and rowdy and just so much damn fun. I’ve lost faith in a lot of people and things and institutions over the years, but I’ve never lost faith in Lansdale’s books, and this is one of his best yet.”    
 —William Boyle, author of SHOOT THE MOONLIGHT OUT

"Whether in his celebrated Hap and Leonard series or in many fine stand-alones (Moon Lake, 2021), Lansdale has always displayed a master chef's hand at blending genre and tone—horror, crime, coming-of-age realism, black humor—into perfectly emulsified, tasty entrées... Mixing horror and thriller is fairly commonplace these days, but few can match Lansdale at finding wit and tenderness bobbing along in the wake of the gore."—Bill Ott, Booklist

"I plan to enjoy this East Texas farce to the fullest, in which the investigation of a missing woman leads to a cult-owned donut shop, a doomsday compound, and a leashed gorilla, among many other Terrible Sights and Strange Happenings."—Crimereads

"dollops of Lansdale’s trademark off-speed humor"—Kirkus Reviews

"As usual, Lansdale's prose is tight, he has laced his highly entertaining story with sly humor, and he has populated it with a cast of quirky characters. This time, they include a brutish, 7-foot-tall arsonist, a cantankerous sheriff, a loveable police dog named Tag, and a cowboy-hat-wearing chimpanzee who rips people's arms off."—Bruce DeSilva, Associated Press

author of The Dime Kathleen Kent

A breathlessly paced, suspenseful novel, revealing the dark underbelly of cults, and people’s enduring fascination with the supernatural.”

MAY 2023 - AudioFile

As Joe R. Lansdale portrays ex-private eye Charlie Garner, he gives the role a Mike Hammer flavor with a Texas twang. The appearance--and disappearance--of Garner's ex-wife sends him on the trail of a cult that is linked to donut shops. He gets help from his brother, Felix, voiced in a chiding tone by Greg Littlefield; a writer nicknamed Scrappy, voiced with a gung-ho attitude and a touch of combativeness by Finlay Stevenson; and Felix's girlfriend, Cherry, a lawyer who is voiced with skepticism and the occasional touch of anger by January LaVoy. Their investigation runs afoul of Police Chief Stone, voiced by Brad Sanders. Even fans of the hard-boiled detective genre will enjoy the surprising humor brought to this mystery by Lansdale and the rest of the cast. J.A.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2023-01-12
Lansdale takes a break from his loopy tales of Hap and Leonard for an East Texas story that’s much, much weirder.

It begins straightforwardly enough: Charlie Garner’s ex-wife, Meg, drops in at his isolated home in the dead of night to ask his help in dealing with the death, possibly the murder, of her husband, Ethan Phillips. As a former cop and former PI, she argues he’s just the person to investigate. Charlie, who’s identified as a writer for a while now, is reluctant, but before he has to decide, Meg vanishes, along with the tracks her car must have left in his driveway. Baffled and troubled, Charlie turns to Felix Garner, the older brother who took over his detective agency even though it paid less well than practicing psychiatry, and together they decide to break into Meg and Ethan’s apartment, where the police duly arrest them. Rescued by Felix’s girlfriend, whip-smart attorney Cherry Shires, they soon find themselves seeking the truth about the Saucer People, a cabal of UFO fans whose numbers included Meg, and the Donut Legion, whose head Manager, a seriously bad dude called Cowboy, is best known for his companion, Mr. Biggs the chimpanzee. The trail to the truth is enlivened by Charlie’s fling with Amelia Moon, whose friends call her Scrappy, and littered with corpses, some shot, some stabbed, some stacked up in freezers. Despite dollops of Lansdale’s trademark off-speed humor, the otherworldly aspects of the mystery are seriously muddled, and the whodunit, which might better be labeled a whathappened, is seriously disappointing.

Don’t worry: Lansdale will surely be back next year with something more welcomely earthbound.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175232173
Publisher:	Hachette Audio
Publication date:	03/21/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

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