A little different style of book, more like if Stephen King wrote a suspense thriller. At the very very first of the book there was some bad metaphors/similes, but by page 5 until the end, nothing but smooth sailing. ( )

“It was a woman, withered and mummified like the other; another leather maiden,...”

The main character in this book is the great-grandson of Sunset Jones, the main character in Lansdale‘s “Sunset and Sawdust“! I kind of love it when authors do that!

As for this book, it's pretty good! Crime, confusion, killing, and DVDs abound! The character of Booger is absolutely insane! And Lansdale's ability to write dialogue, and scribe some of the most amazing metaphors*, makes this a fun book to read. Not as fun as a Hap and Leonard adventure, but fun!

* for example - "It was a bright day, the sunlight like a burst egg yolk running all over the sidewalk and through the yards,..." ( )

One of the reasons I like a series is that there is an understanding, for the most part, that the good guys will still be alive at the end of the book. When you read a standalone like this there is a sense of dread that anything can happen, anyone can die. At least with a first-person narrator there's one guy you feel sure will make it. It it's still scary. I enjoyed this, sense of dread notwithstanding. Not quite as funny as other Lansdales, but just as disturbed. ( )

In Leather Maiden by Joe Lansdale, a Gulf War veteran finds his way back home after being fired from a Houston paper, and winds up working for the small town paper of Camp Rapture. Rifling through his predecessor's desk, he finds notes on the disappearance of a girl named Caroline and decides to pursue the mystery.

With high hopes after just reading The Bottoms, I cracked open Leather Maiden with anticipation, and at first, it seemed like it was going to be just as good. Lansdale's humor shines in this one, with rapid back-and-forth exchanges reminiscent of a 1940s screwball comedy. The banter and wit flies off the page, especially in the newspaper office itself. The mystery itself is intriguing at first. Caroline, to all appearances, was a promising young woman, studious, beautiful, and kept to herself. As the protagonist digs deeper into the mystery, however, he begins to find that Caroline was not all she seemed.

The problem was that the book seemed to lose steam and cohesion around the halfway mark. Two new characters, the Geek and Glug, are introduced, and the description of them is spine-tingling. Their actual appearance, however, fails to live up to their hype. The Geek speaks a bunch of pseudo-intellectual nonsense about how "humans" are all playing a game, he's the only one who knows it, etc. It was all very high school "no one understands me, I'm the only one who gets it" dramatics. While I will admit that this is probably very true to life, I don't read a book about murderers to find them as banal as in real life.

Even the "reveal" is weak - what should have been an "aha!" moment, where everything came together and made sense, just felt like a bunch of unrelated events loosely tied together with the idea that it was all a "game". It was like a prank. A prank, ideally, should be original, take skill, and possibly even send a message. Most pranks, however, are copied from ideas on the Internet and are jejune and insipid. The motive and method of these killers leans towards the latter. Nothing connected in a meaningful way, it didn't send a message, it didn't even really make sense. It was just a bunch of random events that fit into the killers' master plan, which was to... commit a bunch of random acts?

Then there was the character of Booger, who seemed unnecessary and cartoonish. Booger is supposed to be a war buddy of the main character's and is painted in such over-the-top imagery and one-liners that he was honestly a little buffoonish, like a character from a Will Ferrell comedy wandered into a Shakespearean play. He proudly proclaims he's a sociopath, so he gets the killers (again, this is meant to be threatening, I guess, or scary - instead it just comes across as a high schooler trying to tell you how tough he is, man). His presence is also unnecessary. Reading it, I was left with the realization that nearly everything he did could have been done by the main character alone. The only reason to have him was so as not to soil our sympathy for the main character by having him commit morally questionable acts. Actually, that probably would have made the protagonist more interesting in the long run.

Finally, the ending, which I won't spoil too much except to say, Really? That cliche has been used, abused, and taken out back and shot - for good reason. And the bad guys were built up so much that the ending felt... unsatisfying. What should have been a climactic show-down just turned into a, "Oh. That's it?"

Overall, I'd actually rate Leather Maiden a 2.5. The beginning is strong, with deft humor and an intriguing mystery. The scene with Ronnie's mother and her description of Caroline is absolutely chilling. Unfortunately, Lansdale's build-up to the killers ended up being more frightening than the killers themselves. ( )

Normally I enjoy Lansdale’s books, but this one disappointed me. It was too gruesome in some places, and I’m afraid the psychotic “friend” who loves weapons and pops up just in time to help the protagonist has been done to death in crime fiction books. Also the author’s excessive use of "down-home" similes was getting to me after a while. The story itself was fine, but I don’t think the author developed the main characters enough. Good enough for a quick read if you like this type of story, but definitely not a keeper. ( )