The Edge of Dark Water

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Way the Baptists saw it, that dunk in the river made it sure you was going to heaven, even if before or later you knew a cow in the biblical sense and set fire to a crib with the baby in it — Lansdale, this book When I'm pushing Joe R. Lansdale's The Bottoms on somebody, I'll usually tell them that it's in the same vein as To Kill a Mockingbird, kind of. Except it's exciting, and has blood, and scary stuff. And those people, they usually come back and tell me, yep, that's about the sum of it. And: where can I read the rest? Which means they're ready for A Fine Dark Line, Sunset & Sawdust, that line of books — they evoke the region better than anybody else writing, and they're also snapshots of a particular time, but they're never that kind of nostalgic that whitewashes the era or gets all syrupy with sentimentality. And, though Lansdale does tend to stick to the East Texas he knows, that's not at all to limit him to being a 'regional' writer. Even (just) a 'Texas' or 'southern' writer. No, the issues he's dealing with, always, they're big, they're human, they concern us all. What he's always dealing with is how to be a good person in this world. And, sure, there's blood, there's killing — the imagery in Leather Maiden's far from pretty — but there's always a kind of ethical boundary in his work, too. It doesn't make you feel safe — that would be an insult (to Lansdale)  . . . → → →