Lansdale's characters occasionally debate the meaning of life, paying particular attention to faith and prayer. The Thicket is often a funny novel but it isn't shallow. Some of the characters are so outrageous that liking them isn't an issue, including the sheriff who only ever shot three women 'in the line of duty, or nearabouts.' As always, Lansdale creates landscapes and attitudes that draw the reader into the time and place in which the novel is set. They are violent and greedy but not truly evil - they generally direct their violence (if not their thievery) at people who deserve it - and their status as underdogs makes it easy to cheer for them. More surprising is the sympathy Lansdale creates for Eustace and Shorty. It's easy to feel sympathy for Jack, who does his best to maintain his naïve innocence despite his dark experiences in a rough world, and for Jimmie Sue, who has had a difficult life. The search take them to the Big Thicket, a hiding place for all things evil. Eventually a woman of ill-repute named Jimmie Sue joins the posse, as well as two others. Shorty, the gun-shooting dwarf, learned his craft from Annie Oakley. Eustace, the slave's son, is a semi-reliable tracker.

Hence Jack's need to take up with gun-shooting folk who can help him track the bad guys. Before they travel far, desperados make off with Lola. After Jack's parents (like many others in East Texas) die of smallpox, Jack's grandfather decides to send Jack and his sister Lola to live with their aunt in Kansas. In an attention-grabbing first sentence, we learn that sixteen-year-old Jack Parker will 'take up with a gun-shooting dwarf, the son of a slave, and a big angry hog' before finding true love and killing someone. This one did, repeatedly - when I wasn't gagging at Lansdale's descriptions of carnage and mayhem. Many books make me smile but few make me laugh-out-loud. The Thicket is an old-fashioned western with a modern sensibility and a considerable amount of humor. If he isn't making your bones shake with fear, he's making your teeth rattle with laughter. He's written mysteries and suspense novels, science fiction and horror, comic books and cartoons. Give Joe Lansdale credit for versatility.

The thicket joe lansdale