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Kenya. March 2011 vacation. The heat of an tireless sun. The dryness of a beach as white as talcum powder. The fatigue of a midday seafood feast. I decide to give in to the sweet call of a not-so-comfortable bed that is, nonetheless, suitable for a post-lunch rest. The high temperature seems not to diminish my girlfriend's desire for sun as she, undeterred, decides to warm her blood under the blaze of a blazing sun. My endurance reaches its limit. My desire to sleep takes a back seat, and remembering that I brought from home an unopened book by an unknown author, I decide I can entertain myself with "Il mambo degli orsi."
I've never been a great reader. My readings have never been anything sophisticated. My tastes have always been secondary to a book I "had" to read because it was considered a classic. So I decide to delve into the reading of a random story from the famous saga of a quirky duo of trouble-attracting "investigators" that was warmly recommended on DeBaser pages. Their names are Hap Collins and Leonard Pine.
After ten pages my mind no longer responds. Forgetting that I'm in a terrestrial paradise, my mind escapes. Now I'm at La Borde, ready to leave for Grovetown, land of racist pigs and backward Southern rednecks. In Texas.
It's incredible how in just a few pages the level of engagement becomes so high as to wipe away everything happening around. Not a sound, not the soundtrack of the new Arcade Fire album, not the cooling of the air conditioner, not my girlfriend's complete surrender on her scorching lounger diverts my gaze from the novel's pages. In no time, I find myself literally devouring the pages of Lansdale's novel.
Hap Collins, an incurable melancholic with a notable weakness for women and an infallible aim, learns of the disappearance of a former flame of his, also the current lover of the police chief of La Borde (Texas): Marvin, an old friend. The traces lead to Grovetown and dissolve into nothing. He then decides to set out to get to the bottom of the story, thus doing a favor for Marvin, as well as himself. The desire to see Florida (the girl's name) again, who once lit up Hap's nights, is strong. Especially due to the unhappy separation caused by Hap's own lack of ambition. Leonard Pine, a gay African American with a turbulent love life and an impossible cohabitation with drug-dealing neighbors, accompanies Hap in memory of an eternal friendship.
The banality of a simple and coarse plot is practically nullified by a whirlwind of meticulously described characters, free from clichés. Not a single actor in this novel is forgotten. They get under your skin as if every damn day of your life you wake up in Texas. The absurd yet never far from real but at the same time grotesque situations catapult you into the unfolding of the story with well-assorted twists. The humor that pervades the acid and sarcastic dialogues is the icing on the cake of this detective story. The rain, so present and so destructive, accentuates a constant adrenaline rate that grows exponentially in the turbulent finale.
Maybe I'm exaggerating and biased, being the first Lansdale book I've read, but believe me, it won't be the last.
The afternoon passed so quickly that I forgot I had a girlfriend at the mercy of the sun's rays... A noise of keys. A thud. The door opens. I turn around with a simultaneously astonished and amused expression. My girlfriend, with a look so angry that Hulk could easily be a little greenish lizard. It's dinner time. I'll have to make up for wasting an afternoon of delightful idleness on the beach. But I can't. To bed early. Tomorrow, wake up at 5 o'clock sharp. The lions await us.
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