A Pair of Aces

by Joe R. Lansdale

Now complete in one volume, two of Joe Lansdale's works: The Magic Wagon and Written With a Razor.

The Magic Wagon:
When the Magic Wagon comes to town, folks get a genuine medicine show that includes a wrestling ape, fancy shooting, and a peek at the petrified body of Wild Bill Hickok himself. They also get bottles of a whiskey-laced elixir to drown their aches and pains. Old Albert drives the wagon, a rawboned youngster named Buster Fogg does the odd jobs, and "champion" trick shooter and fast talker Billy Bob Daniels owns the show.

Billy Bob claims to be the illegitimate son of Wild Bill himself. As storms hover in their wake, our intrepid trio (and one ape) make their way to a Godforsaken hole named Mud Creek, an East Texas town where the dark cloud of fate hovers and violence looms in the shadows...

Written With a Razor:
A long time ago, in this very galaxy, Joe R. Lansdale created a character named The God of the Razor. The God lives in another dimension, most of the time. Certain symbols, certain acts of bloodletting and violence, certain blades - one razor in particular - can open those doors. In this volume you will find a screenplay based on Joe R. Lansdale's novel NIGHTRUNNERS. The screenplay is written with Neal Barrett Jr., and though it was bought for Master of Terror - the series was canceled, and the movie was never filmed. Still - there is the screenplay - written in a style intended to play like a movie in your head.

Along with that screenplay, you'll find three short stories with intros by the author, explaining bits and pieces of the evolution of The God of the Razor...you'll never look at a razor blade the same way again...

346 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 10, 2014

About the author

Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television.

He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Reviews

[Evans Light]

Review will be updated from time to time as I work my way through the various pieces. If it pops up in my updates, it's because I've added something to it.

Got this as a Christmas gift from Adam and it looks really good. Interesting to see that Lansdale's God of the Razor was adapted into a screenplay and purchased by the Masters of Horror series, but the series was cancelled before the episode was made. That would have been a good one! This collection includes the finished screenplay for that episode, should be fun to imagine it. Lots of other stuff in this ebook as well.

Part 1
Short Stories:

***** The God of the Razor

I've read this story before in other collections, but it merits rereading whenever you get the chance. Short, sweet and simply perfect.

**** King of Shadows

Joe R. Lansdale takes us back into the world of the God of the Razor, this time with a family who has adopted a boy whose father killed himself with a certain infamous blade. While it doesn't quite rise to the sublime level of the previous tale, it's likely still going to be one of the best things you read this year. Recommended.

Janet Finds the Razor (review pending)


Part 2
Screenplay:

The Nightrunners (review pending)


Part 3
Short Novel:

The Magic Wagon (review pending)

[Lee Dunning · Rating 3 out of 5]

As the title implies, "A Pair of Aces" is broken up into two parts. Aside from having the author in common, there is no obvious reason for the match up of the first half of the book and second half of the book. It's a Joe R. Lansdale book, though, so I'm willing to scratch my head, but keep on reading.

The first part of the book is made up of three shorts stories and a screen play. The theme tying all of them together is Mr. Lansdale's character, the God of the Razor. As you might expect from stories with such a character, they're all tales of horror. While you'll find plenty of amusing dialogue and inspired similes, the tales suffer from the same weaknesses of most horror stories. In general, there is no way to permanently stop the evil. If one pseudo-possessed nut job croaks, by the end of the story a new person falls under the spell of the GotR and we the reader know the cycle will repeat. Of the four pieces, I enjoyed the screenplay the most, which surprised me. It might be due to the fact that I've never read a screenplay before, or it may be because it was made up almost entirely of dialogue and Joe R. Lansdale is at his best when putting words in people's mouths.

The second part of the book was made up of a novella called "The Magic Wagon". While there is some hint of mysticism in the story, it's mostly about a boy in East Texas, who loses his parents and joins up with a traveling pair offering snake oil, trick shooting, ape wrestling, and peaks at the supposed corpse of Wild Bill Hickok. The story is equal parts humor, tragedy and violence, often with all three tangled up with one another. I wouldn't put it up there as high on my list as "The Thicket", but it was entertaining and had a few twists in it I didn't see coming.

All in all, I could have done with the two parts of the book meshing better, and with the title of the story being what it is, I would have liked something more akin to "The Magic Wagon" to take up the space of the first part of the book. Due to this being a mixed offering, and me not overly thrilled with a set of horror stories that have few surprises, I'm going to give three stars to this one.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've liked a lot of Lansdale's work, so when this came up on the "wicked cheap ebook" email, I bought it.

Pretty much defines a mixed bag. The God of the Razor short stories are good, if a little same-y after a while. It's a really good, creepy idea, and the first story is fantastic, but there's no evidence here of taking it in a new or interesting direction. The screenplay is godawful--obvious, cheesy, cliched, and offensive. Rape is the worst horror movie cliche, and the contemptible intellectual who finally becomes a real (aka violent) man at the end is a bad one too. Blecch.

The Magic Wagon is a good, entertaining western noir about a traveling medicine/sharpshooting/wrestling ape show. Good stuff. Engaging while I was reading it, but it evaporated from my mind almost immediately.

You could do worse, but you could do better as well.

[Victoria Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this three stars because I LOVED Magic Wagon. The colorful descriptions of the narrator were hilarious and the story wouldn't let me take a break. I'm looking forward to more stories about the Razor God but could have done without the short story written like a movie script.