It's the story of a reporter/columnist who returns to his hometown after not exactly making it in the big city. Upon arriving in town he stumbles on a cold case: the strange disappearance of a local college aged girl.

He decides to write about it and becomes the Man Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

There are moments in this book when Lansdale's taste for gothic horror threatens to overshadow his ability to tell a great story, but mostly those don't get in the way. Certainly not if you happen to like gothic horror.

One thing I found to be gratifyingly odd. Lansdale grants to his main character, Cason, a pleasing arc; a gratifying evolution. Instead of finding some inner goodness that was always there, Cason actually becomes a better man over the course of the story. Maybe it's a result of the books I choose to read, but I find this to be rare. So I was pleased that Lansdale lets us actually see Cason's slow, gradual, and not exactly painless metamorphosis.

I took a break from reading his "Lost Echoes," a book which I own, to read this one which I borrowed from the library as an ebook. I wish it had been the other way around. Lost Echoes left me cold. It felt forced and implausible.

Leather Maiden, which describes incidents that are arguably much more unlikely than those in Lost Echoes, felt more true.