Sunset and Sawdust
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A hard-edged crime thriller set at the start of the Texas oil boom in the 1930s
When Pete Jones, the local constable, is shot dead, his widow, Sunset, finds herself in his job, investigating a series of brutal murders. Most of the townsfolk object to her wearing Pete's gun and badge, some because this is the 1930s and they think a woman's place is in the home, others because it was Sunset who blew off Pete's head in the first place.
As much a modern western as a murder mystery, SUNSET & SAWDUST features a cast of outlandish characters -- gun-men, hobos, sheriffs, hookers, migrants and coloured families struggling to make living under the malevolent eyes of the Ku Klux Klan.
Sunset's investigation leads her and her friends into a labyrinth of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice. Nothing and no-one are quite what they seem in Texas.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The prolific Lansdale's novels (The Bottoms; Rumble Tumble; Bad Chili) are always wild and wooly, and this redneck noir stand-alone is no exception. Lansdale has shifted the time frame to the 1930s, but the novel is still set in his usual series location, East Texas and it's still peopled by the oddest bunch of characters ever to leap off the page. The book opens in the midst of a cyclone as beautiful red-haired Sunset Jones is being beaten and raped by her no-good husband, Pete, in their ramshackle home. Fearing for her life, Sunset picks up Pete's .38 revolver (he's the town constable) and shoots him dead, just as the cyclone carries off most of their house. After recovering from the beating ("She felt as if she had been set on fire and put out with a yard rake"), she's elected to complete the remainder of Pete's term as constable, and she's more than equal to the task. A couple of dead bodies and a land fraud scheme come to light, along with some of the creepiest low-life bad guys to ever crawl out from under a rock. The mystery is only mildly engrossing here; the great pleasure of Lansdale's work lies in his pitch-perfect vernacular prose ("He had greeted them as they climbed into the car, and they hadn't said so much as eat shit or howdy"). The book opens with a cyclone, ends with a plague of grasshoppers and in between there's insanity, extreme violence, sex, grotesques aplenty and an excellent dog. What's not to like?
