This is the second time Lansdale has appeared on this page. I have read a number of his short stories, and watched the Hap and Leonard TV series, but this is my first encounter with the two gentlemen in print. It did not disappoint.
Our east Texas heroes have been fishing and on the way home they almost run over a woman who runs out in the street to wave them down. There has been a car crash and her husband is dead.
A very sad accident. But is it accidental?
I said, "something about this whole thing stinks."
"Did you shower this morning?" Leonard said.
Snotty guys. But they are right in spotting flaws in the supposed car crash. The more they look the more holes they find in the story. And the more holes they find, the deeper is the one they find themselves in...
I stumbled across Lansdale's short fiction in anthologies in the 90s and early 2000s when I was trying to teach myself how to write them myself! (I never saw one of his stories in the original publications in Twilight Zone Magazine in the 80s; I only read a few issues---I should have subscribed!) I'll recommend the collections "Bumper Crop," "Bestsellers Guaranteed" or anything else he's written. His story "Bubba Ho-Tep" was made into a marvelous movie!
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