I finished up the last two book length Hap and Leonard stories while I was on vacation last week. "Rusty Puppy" was about a young black woman who was being harassed by the police. Her brother took exception to how they treated her, and then he turned up dead. It was pretty sad but it had a good ending.
I wasn't as impressed with "Jack Rabbit Smile", unfortunately. Hap and Leonard are hired by a couple of white supremacists to track down their missing relative.
So, let me pause here to say: when you own your own business (I know Hap and Leonard don't own it, but Hap's wife Brett does), shouldn't you be able to decide which cases you will take on? Leonard, being black, should have been able to say "no thanks". And why on Earth would two white supremacists even *want* a black man working for them? Clearly Lansdale wanted to make a point (and a good one), but it felt really contrived.
The ending was really, really sad, too.
Speaking of white supremacists, I enjoyed this true crime from first time Australian author and documentary filmmaker Safran. He has an interesting self-deprecating writing style. While filming a documentary on race, he traveled to Mississippi and inserted himself into a white supremacists' annual banquet for white high school athletes. He traveled back home to Australia, and a couple of years later he learned the man (of course I use the word "man" loosely) had been murdered by a young black man. Safran traveled back to Mississippi in hopes of witnessing the young man's trial and writing about it. It was very fascinating to see an American issue through the eyes of an Australian, and Safran frankly admitted he wanted the case to be all about race, but it was much more nuanced than that.
"The Lost Gutenberg" made me cry. Estelle Doheny, widow of wealthy oilman Edward Doheny, spent decades carefully curating a priceless collection of books, paintings, and autographs. The jewel of her collection was a Gutenberg Bible, purchased after many years of trying in 1950 for over $100,000. Estelle was a devout Catholic, and when she passed away she left her collection to a seminary for research, along with a wealthy trust to care for and maintain the collection. Proving once again that I am right in hating organized religion, the literal minute the church was able to legally sell the items in her collection they did, breaking up the beautiful library and netting close to $40 million in profits (most of which is still unaccounted for, naturally). Her beautiful, nearly flawless Gutenberg was sold to Japan, where it now sits locked in a vault in a university, and even qualified scholars aren't allowed to see it. It's the exact opposite of what Estelle wanted, and it's heartbreaking. Before the collection was sold, the librarian in charge did allow it to be scientifically examined, and discovered many interesting things about the ink and paper Gutenberg used, so at least there was that.
And finally, I read "The Stranger Beside Me" by Ann Rule many years ago, and decided to read it again after watching the Ted Bundy tapes on Netflix. I've tried reading other books by Rule, and none are quite as good as this one. Ann was friends with Ted Bundy, worked with him at a Crisis Call Center in Washington state. They kept in touch over the years, and Ann was horrified when he was arrested for kidnapping in Colorado. Ted assured her he was innocent, then broke out of jail and escaped, not once but twice. The second time he made it all the way to Florida, where he murdered several young woman and was arrested and put on trial, sentenced to death. He was electrocuted in 1989. I've read other books about Ted Bundy, but this one really is the best.
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