Leather Maiden

June 9, 2008
Cason Statler, a Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist with a checkered past, returns to his small hometown of Camp Rapture, Tex., to work as a columnist for the local newspaper in this fine stand-alone from Lansdale (Lost Echoes
). On the hunt for spicy material, Statler latches onto the story of a missing college student who disappeared under strange circumstances a year earlier. Almost immediately, Statler connects the case to a recent string of kinky, unsettling crimes throughout east Texas. What’s more, his brother, a college history professor, appears to be caught in the swirl of events as a victim or possibly even a suspect. As usual, Lansdale offers salty humor, brisk plotting and appealingly off-key characters who move through a world that’s at one moment folksy and the next macabre. This isn’t the author’s best effort—as a main character, Statler is too much a work-in-progress—but you can never go too far wrong with Lansdale, who’s won an Edgar and six Stokers, among many other awards. 4-city author tour.

July 15, 2008
The only reason to go to Camp Rapture, in the heart of Lansdale's ("Sunset and Sawdust") well-plowed patch of east Texas, is if you have to, and Cason Statler has to. He is having flashbacks from his service in Iraq still hankering for his ex, drinking too much, and has been fired from his job as a Houston journalist. As a new reporter for the local rag, Cason has to fill up the space between the ads with choice bits about the colorful local yokels and their animals. When he happens on the story of a drop-dead gorgeous coed who, after picking up an order of fast food, seemingly fell off the face of the earth, Cason's on it like a feist on a bone. With its mysterious disappearances, abandoned houses, midnight trysts, and hidden culverts, Lansdale's latest is a contemporary Hardy Boys story on crank, read to best advantage late at night under the covers, with the aid of a flashlight. As a safe bet for any patron who walks through the doors p.o.'d (with the weather, politics, life), this is recommended for all public libraries.Bob Lunn, Kansas City P.L., MO

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2008
Hoping to regain control of his life, Cason Statler returns home to Camp Rapture inEast Texas, but he needs more than Moms cooking to get back on track. Cason is a wreck, drinking too much, obsessing about the woman who ditched him while he was in Iraq, and having bad dreams about what he did in Iraq. Hes also gnawing on the loss of a promising career as a journalist. Even a Pulitzer nomination couldnt save his job after he had an affair with his editors wife--and his daughter. But he lands a job with the Camp Rapture Report as a columnist and quickly becomes interested in the six-month-old disappearance of a college student, which reminds himthat some very hinky things go on in small towns. Lansdale has been writing his brand of quirky country noir for several decades, with frequent excursions into fantasy, SF, horror, and westerns; fans of each genre revere him. Leather Maiden shows that Lansdale still has the crime chops he demonstrated in his Hap Collins/Leonard Pine novels. His East Texas remains a brooding, scary, fascinating place filled with offbeat characters whose dialogue is often wonderfully funny and, just as often, inventively vulgar. The violence is brief but intense, proving yet again thatLansdale country is no place for the squeamish.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)