Subject: Review: 'The Two-Bear Mambo' by Joe R. Lansdale

From: [email-masked] (Rick Kleffel)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 20:25:35 GMT

The Two-Bear Mambo
		Joe R. Lansdale

Texan writer Joe R. Lansdale loves his two ne'er-do-wells Hap ( goal-less
and white) and Leonard (angry, gay and black) so much it's difficult for the
reader not to feel the same.  In "The Two Bear Mambo", Lansdale's third Hap
and Leonard book, the two friends manage to find themselves a whole bunch of
trouble while looking for Florida, Leonard's one-time lawyer and Hap's one-
time lover, in a nasty little burg out in the wilds of east Texas.  It seems
that Grovertown doesn't cotton too much to blacks who "don't know their
place", and Florida, a black woman layer investigating the death of the son
of a blues prodigy in Grovertown's jail, surely qualifies.  Clueless but
motivated, Hap and Leonard blunder into Grovertown.
	Fortunately for the reader, the main attraction of "The Two- Bear
Mambo" is Hap's voice and not his plans.  Lansdale has found an easy-going
tale-spinner's first person narrator in Hap, and more than in the first two
books, he lets the voice itself, rather than the plot shape the story.
Every page contains a clever phrase or a description that gives the reader a
good, if lowbrow laugh.  But beneath that lowbrow invective is a careful
characterization of a man who is going nowhere at an easy pace.  Hap, for
all his wit, is a good friend to Leonard and not much else.  He needs a
career, a goal, something that Florida chastised him for that still rings in
his brain.  Finding Florida in a godawful backwater town full of dangerous
hate mongering morons barely lasts out the novel.
	Leonard, on the other hand, at least has plans beyond his friendship
with Hap.  He has his lover, Raul, and his uncle's house to take care of,
and his neighbor's house to burn down periodically, when the crack dealers
who inhabit it get out of line.  The plot of "The Two Bear Mambo" is linear,
and not particularly full of surprises, but the delivery is pretty rootin'
tootin' funny, in a making-fun-of-rednecks fashion.  Still, by the end of
the novel, the reader is inclined to want Hap to take Florida's advice to
get a life.  There's only so far you can go on a voice alone, and Lansdale
goes farther than most.  "The Two-Bear Mambo" is an enjoyable, hilarious
novel and sometimes frustrating novel, where the main character talks so
much and so well, in the end, the reader will be talking to the writer.

%T The Two-Bear Mambo
%A Joe R. Lansdale
%G ISBN 0-89296-491-X
%I Mysterious Press
%O $19.95; US hard cover
%P 273 pages