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Product Description
From the Edgar Award-winning author of the Hap and Leonard series, a hard-boiled novel set in 1960s Texas in which a no-nonsense car salesman faces a tempting decision, a dangerous deal, and an alluring affair.Ed Edwards is in the used car business, a business built on adjusted odometers, extra-fine print, and the belief that "buyers better beware." Burdened by an aging, alcoholic mother constantly on his case to do something worthier of his lighter skin tone and dreaming of a brighter future for himself and his plucky little sister, Ed is ready to get out of the game.When Dave, his lazy, grease-stained boss at the eponymous dealership Smiling Dave's sends him to repossess a Cadillac, Ed finally gets the chance to escape his miserable life.The Cadillac in question was purchased by Frank Craig and his beautiful wife Nancy, owners of a local drive-in and pet cemetery. Fed up with her deadbeat husband and with unfulfilled desires of her own, Nancy suggests to Ed -- in the throes of their salacious affair -- that they kill Frank and claim his insurance policy. It is a tantalizing offer: the girl, the car, and not one, but two businesses. Ed could finally say goodbye to Smiling Dave's, and maybe even send his sister to college. But does he have what it takes to see the plan through?Told with Joe Lansdale's trademark grit, wit, and dark humor, More Better Deals is a gripping tale of the strange characters and odd dealings that define 1960s East Texas.
Customer Reviews
It won't take any noir fan long to see that Joe Lansdale's More Better Deals is Lansdale's homage to James M. Cain; within a few pages of our used car salesman Ed Edwards meeting femme fatale Nancy Craig and learning about her abusive husband, you know things are going to escalate into violence and murder - the question is simply how bad it's going to be. And the answer, it turns out, is "very"; yes, there are bodies (plural) here, but more than that, Lansdale embraces the messiness and unpredictability of violence, bringing something of the Coens (Blood Simple & Fargo, especially) to every act of killing and intimidation. All of which may make More Better Deals sound derivative, but rest assured, for all of its influences, the book is pure Lansdale, through and through, from its crass but lived-in dialogue, its dark sense of humor, its willingness to push boundaries and refuse to be hemmed in by expectations, and its desire to create a plot that's hard to predict and yet completely gripping. It also means that the book revolves around race in a way that neither Cain nor the Coens are interested in - Edwards is a light-skinned man born of a mixed-race relationship, and the fact that he's "passing" in the 1960s isn't just colorful subtext here; it's a large part of the plotting and who Ed is as a person, as is his service in Korea. The result is pretty much classic Lansdale in every way, scratching the same itches as any of those classic hard-boiled noir novels but with its own off-kilter, utterly original sensibility, brutal (and sometimes darkly comic) violence, immersive narration, and a plot that constantly surprised me even as it delivered every beat you need for a noir novel. If you're a hard-boiled noir fan, it's a no-brainer.
