Joe R. Lansdale

"A flat-out, pedal-to-the-metal tale of blood, revenge and greed"

Savage Season

Ryan LaFerney

Savage Season is a crime novel by American author Joe R. Lansdale, published in 1990. It is the first in a series of books and stories written by Lansdale featuring the characters Hap Collins and Leonard Pine. The novel was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel of 1990. Joe R. Lansdale has written some of the most funny, vulgar, and horrific stories ever written and I can see why he is lauded as an American original by many critics and fellow authors (including Stephen Graham Jones).

SAVAGE SEASON is book one in the Hap & Leonard series and introduces us to three, main, colorful characters: Hap Collins, Leonard Pine, and Hap’s ex-wife Trudy. The dialog that transpires between these three characters is seriously laugh-out-loud funny. 

Hap & Leonard’s friendship consists mostly of busting each other’s balls but it’s easy to get a sense of that strong brotherhood bond that rests just under the surface of all that banter.

Savage Season came out in 1990 and is slightly different to the subsequent books in that it is greed – and it must be said Collins’ libido – which gets them into trouble. The men are working low paid jobs so money is tight. When Trudy arrives in town the men are out in the fields shooting skeet for the pot. Trudy and Collins were lovers at university, and it was she who encouraged him to become a conscientious objector. Separation can hurt any relationship though, and Collins found her visits to the state prison where he was incarcerated less and less frequent, until they stopped completely. When she tells Collins, after sex, that she knows how he can earn a cool $200,000 tax free, he is self-aware enough to know he’s being played but not quite enough to stop himself from taking the bait.

Trudy’s left wing politics have never left her. Her most recent husband, Howard, did time in prison for an anti-nuclear demonstration that got out of hand. During his sentence, Howard learned from another inmate about $1 million haul, the fruits of a bank robbery, which was lost in the maze-like creek system around LaBorde before the robbers could get away. Tragedy befell this other inmate before his release, and now the money will belong to whomever gets their hands on it. Trudy wants her share to fund a protest group she’s involved with.

Nothing is ever so simple, and Trudy is not so peaceful as she appears. Other criminals get wind of the haul, and there is plenty of twists and double crosses.

The book ends on a bittersweet but also hopeful note. The men escape with their lives, though Pine is left seriously injured, and part of their money goes to pay for his hospital care. Collins donates his share to Greenpeace, and though his faith in others takes a battering, his own ideals are reinforced. The book ends, strangely, in some beautiful prose meditating on the nature of idealism:

"Idealism was a little like Venus in the daytime. There'd been a time when I could see it."

I found Savage Season to be a fast-paced, funny, heist thriller. It is a really entertaining novel and I can see why folks love Lansdale's work. In fact, I have become a fan. In just under two hundred pages this is a great first book in a series there’s just enough there to get invested in Hap & Leonard’s lives as well as get acquainted with what seems to be the main selling points: absolute mayhem & comedy.

Savage Season

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