Waltz of Shadows (Lost Lansdale Series ~ Volume 1) [Hardcover]

Joe R. Lansdale (Author), Mark A. Nelson (Author, Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bill, who's 24, hooks up with the Disaster Club, four hedonistic youths obsessed with sex and death who plan to throw a scare into a philandering doctor. While they stake out the doctor, they stumble into a hit on his wife. The hired assassins are Fat Boy and Cobra Man, both major-league psycho killers. The wife is butchered, as are Bill's companions; he escapes and turns to his Uncle Hank for help. Reluctantly, Hank gets involved, recruiting his long-estranged brother Arnold and going up against the gruesome twosome. This launches The Lost Lansdale, Subterranean's issue of older, unpublished work from the much-admired noir crime writer (Bad Chili, Freezer Burn, etc.). The author's longtime readers will note his trademark deluge of salty profanity, stark East Texas settings, casual violence and graphic excess. They will also encounter an uncharacteristic lack of humor and a tedious predictability: the characters that wise readers expect to survive generally do, the remainder are far less fortunate. Of the many violent scenes, only one featuring a rape manages to truly shock. While not without raw power and some stylistic flourishes, this novel, written in 1991, is inferior to Lansdale's more recent work and will appeal mostly to collectors and the most dedicated fans.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Subterranean Press (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1892284294
• ISBN-13: 978-1892284297
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,865,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over thirty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in eighteen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Hotep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror." He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great One for Lansdale Collectors, May 25, 2000

By 

D. Read "Maximumdread" (GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waltz of Shadows (Lost Lansdale Series ~ Volume 1) (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed this novel, and I'm very happy to own the limited edition book. This is part of the "Lost Lansdale" series that Subterranean Press has been doing such an awesome job with. Waltz of Shadows, as Lansdale himself explains, was written in the early 90's, but Joe did not feel it was up to standards and decided not to publish it. Supposedly, this will be the only edition of this book for the forseeable future.

Waltz of Shadows is indeed flawed, and Lansdale was wise to keep it in the trunk. But for an avid Lansdale reader such as myself, the book is very enjoyable anyway. When I say it is flawed, I don't mean in any kind of hopeless way. The writing is tight, and pure Lansdale. There are, however, a few clumsy linchpins in the plot, and a few of the characters are struggling to be something they're not. But anything I noticed was easily forgiven, and I charged right through the book very quickly.

If this is still available, I'd say grab it for your Lansdale collection for sure. But if you're just a casual fan, I'd say stick with the many more modestly priced Lansdale novels that are in print.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A DARK NOVEL OF INTENSE VIOLENCE!!!, November 4, 2001

By 

Wayne C. Rogers (Las Vegas, Nevada United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waltz of Shadows (Lost Lansdale Series ~ Volume 1) (Hardcover)

WALTZ OF SHADOWS by Joe R. Lansdale was first written back during the early nineties in a much longer version for Mysterious Press. Because the author felt he'd missed the mark in the writing of this mainstream novel, he had it pulled from publication and more or less let it sit in a trunk for the next several years. When Subterranean Press expressed an interest in doing a signed, limited edition of it, Mr. Lansdale took the book out of storage and trimmed over two hundred pages off of the manuscript. Though he felt better about the final result, there was still a lot of trepidation with regards to seeing the book published. Why? I have no idea. This is a terrific novel! When I read his introduction to it, I was expecting a clunker with maybe a few shining moments. Instead, I found myself hooked in the first twenty pages and then propelled forward like a human cannon ball being fired from one end of the circus tent to the other. WALTZ OF SHADOWS is the story of Hank Small-a pretty nice guy who owns a video store and has a great wife and two wonderful children-and what happens to him when his young nephew, Billy, calls him for help. It seems that Billy got involved in a yuppie gang of young people who enjoyed perverted sex and courting death for that sharp adrenaline rush. One night when the gang decides to do a home invasion in order to score a little cash, they encounter two men (Fat Boy and Snake) at their intended victim's home who are the personification of death itself. Billy manages to escape, but the rest of the gang is tortured and murdered. Billy knows that he's being hunted by the two psychos and wants his uncle Hank to help him out of this dilemma. Not knowing quite what to do, Hank turns to his half brother, Arnold, who he hasn't talked to in over ten years. Arnold is one tough hombre and has spent a bit of time in prison. Hank realizes that if anyone will know how to handle the two psychopaths, it'll be him. Before the two brothers can even get a game plan rolling, however, Fat Boy and Snake find Billy and do a little good-natured torturing to see who knows about them. From that point on, nobody in the Small family is safe. If Hank wants to keep his wife and children alive, both he and Arnold are going to have to prepare for a bloodbath. WALTZ OF SHADOWS is dark, violent, intense, and utterly suspenseful. Fat Boy and Snake are two of the vilest criminals I've ever read in fiction. They're ruthless and evil in every sense of the word, and totally believable. When they invade Hank's home, humiliating him and raping his wife, the reader is stunned and left speechless by the graphic violence and how realistically it's described. Mr. Lansdale doesn't pull any punches. He sets the ground rules for what's to follow so that the reader will understand Hank and Arnold's need for absolute revenge, and that it's going to be a fight to the death with no mercy shown by either side. All of the characters are avidly drawn, and the prose is pure Lansdale at its best. Except for Andrew Vachss, I don't know of any other author who could've written a novel of such darkness and violence, and still have the protagonists maintain their humanity. This novel is definitely a winner! I hope Mr. Lansdale will eventually allow it to be published in a mass-market paperback format so that thousands of other readers will get to experience this "dark time in the dark woods." HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mucho Mojo that might have been, December 7, 2011

By 

Adam Cesare (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Waltz of Shadows (Kindle Edition)

According to the preface, this book owes its existence to the small press. Dissatisfied with the first draft, Lansdale put the book aside until he was encouraged to take another crack at it so WALTZ (originally written under the title MUCHO MOJO, which Lansdale later used for the 2nd Hap and Leonard book, in the end they're very different but there are vestigial plot similarities in this lesser-known work) could be turned into a hardcover limited edition.

Despite being intended for the more "die hard" market, I've got to wholeheartedly disagree with the reviewer that claims this is for completists only. It may not be my favorite of Lansdale's work, but it is quite enjoyable and more than worth a read (especially in this affordable ebook release).

For me, this is "Lansdale crime" at its best. The villains are as scummy as can be, the violence is stomach-churning but never gratuitous, and the heroes are flawed as they are constantly imperiled (as much as I love Hap and Leonard, most of the time it's quite hard to fear for their lives). In the preface Lansdale reveals that to get the book into fighting shape he cut down the word count substantially and I think this economy is one of the main reasons the novel works so well. The plot is constantly in motion and while it's not the most complicated of capers, there are enough fake outs and reversals to provide even jaded readers with a thrill.

Five stars. You should buy it.