Things Get Ugly: The Best Crime Fiction of Joe R. Lansdale

by Joe R. Lansdale, S. A. Cosby (Foreword by)

Overview

Edgar Award winner and bestselling author Joe R. Lansdale (the Hap and Leonard series), one of America's most essential crime writers, heads back to the dangerous woods of East Texas. In his first crime career-retrospective, including previously uncollected work, Lansdale shows exactly why critics continue to compare him to Elmore Leonard, Donald Westlake, Flannery O’Connor, and William Faulkner.

“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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781616963972
Publisher:	Tachyon Publications
Publication date:	08/15/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	317,495
File size:	888 KB

About the Author

Joe R. Lansdale (Savage Season, The Donut Legion) is the internationally-bestselling author of over fifty novels, including the popular, long-running Hap and Leonard novels. Many of his works have been adapted for television and film, most famously the films The Thicket, Bubba Ho-Tep, Cold in July, and the Hap and Leonard series on Sundance TV and AMC. Lansdale has written numerous screenplays and teleplays, including the iconic Batman: The Animated Series. He has won an Edgar Award for The Bottoms, ten Stoker Awards, and he has been designated a World Horror Grandmaster. Lansdale, like many of his characters, lives in East Texas, with his wife, Karen.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction to Things Get Ugly
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.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale
Foreword by S. A. Crosby

The Steel Valentine
Driving to Geronimo's Grave
Mr Bear
The Job
Six Finger Jack
The Shadows, Kith and Kin
The Ears
Santa at the Cafe
I Tell You It’s Love
Dead Sister
Booty and the Beast
Boys Will Be Boys
Billie Sue
The Phone Woman
Dirt Devils
Drive in Date
Rainy Weather
Incident On and Off a Mountain Road
The Projectionist

Editorial Reviews

06/12/2023

This mixed-bag collection of 19 stories from Edgar winner Lansdale (A Fine Dark Line) features violent tales set mostly in East Texas. The highlight is “The Shadows, Kith and Kin,” an atmospheric and inspired attempt to get into the head of Charles Whitman, who, in 1966, climbed to the top of a tower at the University of Texas and gunned down random passersby. Lansdale uses the present tense to create a sense of immediacy as Whitman prepares for his murderous rampage, fueled by visions of faceless, shadowy figures. “Incident on and off a Mountain Rod,” about a woman’s desperate efforts to escape a psychopath, is also memorable, despite a familiar plotline. Elsewhere, innovative premises are poorly executed; “Mr. Bear,” which features a drunken, anthropomorphized version of Smokey the bear, is a muddle that doesn’t work as satire or horror. Lansdale fans may find enough to enjoy here, but first-timers would be better served to start with the novels. Agent: Danny Baror, Baror International. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

A potent blend of stories from one of the all-time greats, Things Get Ugly is the kind of collection you never want to end—as it shows the versatility and command of the craft only a legend like Lansdale can execute.”
—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

From the Publisher

2023-06-21
Nineteen stories, first published between 1983 and 2016, from the prolific creator of Hap and Leonard.

“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. If there’s a general weakness here apart from some sex scenes even kinky readers may find disturbing, it’s Lansdale’s fondness for killing off virtually the entire cast of so many entries. Even so, the hits keep on coming. Though the final twist in “Santa at the Café” is the most predictable of all, the climactic twist in “Incident On and Off a Mountain Road,” probably the single strongest story here, will stay with you for a long time.

Though Lansdale scoffs at trigger warnings, these tales are rated NC-17 for offensive language and serious sexual violence.

Kirkus Reviews