The Thicket by Joe Lansdale

Published by Mulholland Books on September 10, 2013

Give Joe Lansdale credit for versatility. He's written mysteries and suspense novels, science fiction and horror, comic books and cartoons. If he isn't making your bones shake with fear, he's making your teeth rattle with laughter. The Thicket is an old-fashioned western with a modern sensibility and a considerable amount of humor. Many books make me smile but few make me laugh-out-loud. This one did, repeatedly -- when I wasn't gagging at Lansdale's descriptions of carnage and mayhem.

In an attention-grabbing first sentence, we learn that sixteen-year-old Jack Parker will "take up with a gun-shooting dwarf, the son of a slave, and a big angry hog" before finding true love and killing someone. After Jack's parents (like many others in East Texas) die of smallpox, Jack's grandfather decides to send Jack and his sister Lola to live with their aunt in Kansas. Before they travel far, desperados make off with Lola. Hence Jack's need to take up with gun-shooting folk who can help him track the bad guys. Eustace, the slave's son, is a semi-reliable tracker. Shorty, the gun-shooting dwarf, learned his craft from Annie Oakley. The angry hog is named Hog. Eventually a woman of ill-repute named Jimmie Sue joins the posse, as well as two others. The search take them to the Big Thicket, a hiding place for all things evil.

It's easy to feel sympathy for Jack, who does his best to maintain his naïve innocence despite his dark experiences in a rough world, and for Jimmie Sue, who has had a difficult life. More surprising is the sympathy Lansdale creates for Eustace and Shorty. They are violent and greedy but not truly evil -- they generally direct their violence (if not their thievery) at people who deserve it -- and their status as underdogs makes it easy to cheer for them. Some of the characters are so outrageous that liking them isn't an issue, including the sheriff who only ever shot three women "in the line of duty, or nearabouts." As always, Lansdale creates landscapes and attitudes that draw the reader into the time and place in which the novel is set.

The Thicket is often a funny novel but it isn't shallow. Lansdale's characters occasionally debate the meaning of life, paying particular attention to faith and prayer. Jack's grandfather taught him that comforting religious beliefs are preferable to thinking "too much on my own, cause it might lead to other ideas that might be right but unpleasant." Shorty argues that faith in God's will leads to "disappointment and false expectations." Jack's Christian teachings, cautioning against vengeance and urging him to turn the other cheek, are at odds with the more violent but arguably more effective methods that Eustace and Shorty believe will help them find Lola. Still, this isn't a heavy philosophical tome. Lansdale uses the discussions of morality to poke good natured fun at hypocrisy.

Some aspects of the story (like the hooker with a heart of gold) are clichéd but the clichés are played for laughs -- and more often than not Lansdale gives the cliché a little twist. Fans of shoot-outs will be amused by the most hilarious gunfight I've encountered. Gore aside, The Thicket left me smiling.

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