In the Mad Mountains

I have two favourite writers. Actually, that’s silly; I have dozens of favourite writers. But there are two at the top of the list and I cherish almost every word they’ve written. One is Victoria Wood; the other is Joe Lansdale, the author of this collection of stories inspired by the works of another writer: HP Lovecraft.

Lansdale writes crime fiction. He writes westerns. He writes steampunk. He writes horror stories and stories you couldn’t put a name to if you had a month to spare and nothing much else to do. Almost all of it is told in a lyrical, conversational, East Texas – his home – voice that I find simply entrancing.

He’s as tough as a nickel steak. I gave him some punches that would have made an elephant shit a stack of lawn chairs, and he kept dancing. He has a head like a block of stone.

“Handguns, long guns, and an axe,” Booger said. “We’re ready for anything up to an angry hippopotamus, and one of them too, if it’s having an off night.”

The stand worker was a skinny fellow with an Adam’s apple that moved a lot and made him look like s snake trying to swallow a live gopher.

Anyway, In the Mad Mountains is a collection of horror stories – almost all written in the Lansdale style – and it’s not one of his best books. Good, but not great. You get to the end of almost every story and think, ‘Okay. That was all right. Just all right.’ But here’s the thing.

With a few exceptions, even when he’s just all right, Joe Lansdale is wonderfully entertaining. You read him for the way he writes. For his use of language. The rhythm of the prose. It's like sitting in a pub with a friend who's telling you a story you’ve heard before, but you don’t mind at all because the way they tell the story is just pure, pure pleasure.

I will never stop buying books by Joe Lansdale.