Description

In this holy mess of a case for the “perpetual bad boy” (New York Times) sleuths in the beloved Hap and Leonard series, PI Duo Hap and Leonard investigate the untimely death of a woman whose family stood much to gain from her passing.

Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Minnie had a feeling she was being targeted, shaken down by some shadowy force. However, when she’d solicited Hap & Leonard, all it took was one off color joke to turn her sour and she’d called them off the investigation. Wracked with a guilty conscience, the two PIs—along with Hap’s fleet-footed wife, Brett—tuck in to the case. As they look closer, they dredge up troublesome facts: for one, Minnie’s daughter, Alice, has recently vanished. She’d been hard up after her pet grooming business went under and was in line to collect a whopping insurance sum should anything happen to her mother. The same was due to Minnie’s estranged husband, Al, whose kryptonite (beautiful, money-grubbing women) had left him with only a run-down mobile home. But did Minnie’s foolish, cash-strapped family really have it in them to commit a crime this grisly? Or is there a larger, far more sinister scheme at work?
Irreverent, wise-cracking, and full of atmosphere and bite, Sugar on the Bones is not to be missed. 

Praise

"Lansdale makes a triumphant return to his Hap and Leonard novels with this scorcher. When Minnie Polson comes to the duo’s PI agency seeking help, things go south after an ill-timed remark causes her to storm out. She later turns up dead and the guilt-stricken pair seeks her killer. Minnie’s family — full of eccentricities and petty grievances — are the unusual suspects." —Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times
"Edgar winner Lansdale excels in his savagely funny 13th case for East Texas PIs Hap Collins and Leonard Pine…Blood-splattered action and a welcome spoonful of irreverent humor make this a surefire hit. It’s a high-water mark for the series." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"There’s humor and then there’s gallows humor. The Hap & Leonard books of Joe R. Lansdale embrace the latter with a martini-dry wit (not that anyone in these rough and tumble books is asking for a martini, shaken or not)." —Parade
"May be the best novel in this fine series. The quirky characters are well drawn, the prose is tight, the pace is furious, the surprises keep coming and the violent climax is nothing less than savage." —Bruce DeSilva, Associated Press
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