The Bottoms

Overview

The talented voice of East Texas delivers a riveting, poignant, and suspenseful tale of a Depression-era serial murder seen through the eyes of a young boy.

Editorial Reviews

In his latest suspense thriller, prolific yarn-spinner Lansdale, best known for his offbeat series featuring the mismatched East Texas Sherlocks Hap Collins and Leonard Pine (Bad Chili), presents a different voice in a coming-of-age story set in the early years of the Great Depression. Lansdale's 80-something protagonist, Harry Crane, looks back to the day in 1933 when he was 13 and, with his nine-year-old sister, Tom (Thomasina), he found the mutilated corpse of a black prostitute bound to a tree with barbed wire near their home along the hardscrabble bottomlands of the Sabine River. The discovery presents their father, Jacob CraneAa farmer and barber eking out a living as the town constableAwith a nightmarish investigation. News travels slowly in the days before television, but Jacob learns from the black doctor who performs the makeshift autopsy that two other mutilated bodies have been found over the last 18 months. Because the victims are black and "harlots," no one in the county much cares. But when the body of a white prostitute is discovered, a rabid mob lynches MosesAa black man who has been something of a surrogate father to JacobAdespite Jacob and Harry's heroic efforts to save him. Predictably, another body is soon discovered. Lansdale is best when recreating the East Texas dialogue and setting. Readers will not have to work hard to unearth comparisons to characters in To Kill a Mockingbird, but gruesome details of the murders keep the novel from being labeled a period piece. Folksy and bittersweet, though rather rough-hewn and uneven, Lansdale's novel treats themes still sadly pertinent today. (Aug.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Author Information

Bio of Joe R. Lansdale

Joe R. Lansdale was born in Gladewater, Tex. in 1951. He attended Tyler Junior College, the University of Texas at Austin, and Stephen F. Austin State University. Lansdale has also had a varied career, having worked as a bouncer, a bodyguard, a transportation manager, a custodian, and a karate instructor before becoming a fulltime writer in 1981. Lansdale's written work includes several novels and more than 200 short stories. Although his favorite genre is fantasy, with suspense a close second, he has also written mysteries, horror, science fiction, and westerns. Some titles include Rumble Tumble, Dead in the West, The Nightrunners, Cold in July, By Bizarre Hands and The Drive-in (a 'B' Movie with Blood and Popcorn. Made in Texas) . In addition, Lansdale has edited the short-story anthologies Best of the West, The New Frontier: Best of the West 2, and Razored Saddles. Lansdale has received five Bram Stoker Awards from the Horror Writers of America, including one for "The Night They Missed the Horror Show." He has also been awarded the British Fantasy Award and the American Horror Award. Joe Lansdale and his second wife, Karen, have two children. They live in Nacagdoches, Tex.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Grand Central Publishing

Filesize

1.79 MB

Number of Pages

336

eBook ISBN

9780446931373

Awards

• Edgar Awards (Edgar Allan Poe Awards)
• Hammett Prize
• International Horror Guild Awards