Captains Outrageous: 6 (Hap and Leonard)

Hap Collins and Leonard Pine find mucho trouble, this time in Mexico, when they come face to face with a nudist mobster, his seven-foot strong-arm, an octogenarian knife-touting fisherman, and, somehow, an armadillo.

When Hap Collins saves the life of his employer’s daughter, he is rewarded with a Caribbean cruise, and he convinces his best friend, Leonard Pine, to come along. However, when the cruise sails on without them, stranding them in Playa del Carmen with nothing but their misfortune and Leonard’s ridiculous new hat, the two quickly find themselves drawn into a vicious web of sordid violence. When they return to East Texas, they find that trouble has beaten them back, and when trouble’s around it doesn’t take long for Hap and Leonard to find it.

“A storyteller in the great American tradition of Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain.” —The Boston Globe

“Lansdale reaches the reader on a gut level....A terrific writer.” —Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine