The Deep South, a Detective Duo, and a Series to Remember

Ending the Hap and Leonard series gives me a feeling of both fulfillment, peace and sadness, a dark of the moon kind of feeling. The characters of Hap and Leonard have been with me since the late eighties, when I started the novel Savage Season. They first appeared in 1990 when the book debuted, getting into trouble with one of Hap’s ex-flames, and I thought it was a one-off shot.

But those two wouldn’t leave me alone. They were unique, especially for the time. One man was Black, the other white, and they were best friends. The Black character, Leonard, was gay, and also a conservative and a tough guy. Hap, the narrator of the series, was straight and white and liberal. Still, they showed me just how they were brothers from different mothers.

When it came to crime fiction, there weren’t many main characters who were gay, if any. Most gay characters in fiction and film were the goofy neighbor next door, not some bad ass who could break your arm off and use it to beat your ass into jelly. But I knew gay people, and they were far more varied than the damaging stereotypes that were so prevalent at the time. I wanted to testify to that. To show that oversimplifications were their own unique threat. I was able in those books to write about civil rights, gay rights, the differences in people and how being different didn’t eliminate the potential for a personal bond. I didn’t want to sugar coat these things, and didn’t, but I also wanted to write books that were adventurous, sometimes mysterious and dark, and above all, humorous. I feel that humor is an important way to get through life. As my character Shorty says in The Thicket, “Everything in life is funny, except your own death. But others will laugh.”

After Savage Season, the boys, as some people refer to them, popped back up four years later in Mucho Mojo, and I’ve written about them off and on ever since. Hap and Leonard never shied away from homophobia, classism, extremism, predatory religious practices, sexism, you name it. They went up against everyone from the Dixie Mafia to Nazi survivalists, came home with more than a few bruises. 

Now with fifteen novels, comic adaptations, numerous novellas and short stories, as well as the beloved television series Hap and Leonard, the ground has gotten hard. They’ve have had a hell of a run, and I’ve heard people say they changed their lives, helped change their views on things. Gave them the ability to look outside themselves and understand an entirely new perspective about people different than they are. Provided a moral compass of sorts. Carried them through illness, family hardships, addiction– you name it. Hap and Leonard changed pop culture and crime fiction in their own small way, and after almost forty years, that ends with this novel, Petrified Dreams. 

I gave myself some room, in case they come storming into my office with some new adventure they just have to tell me about, but truthfully, I think they are tired and ready to put their feet up. Doing what they’ve been doing is bound to wear on a person, and I think, like me, they want to go out having had great adventures and not end up petering out like sand through an hourglass. They wanted to go out with at least a little sand still in the glass, and they have.

The characters are very real to me. I have written books with other characters I enjoyed writing about, and maybe even written more “literary” books, but no characters I’ve created have been so tapped into my psyche as these guys. They share much of my own past, and that is another powerful connection. Some people, including my daughter, when I told them the boys were done with their stories, were emotionally moved. My daughter cried a little. The boys have been in her life so long they almost seem like uncles.

I wept a little too, if I’m honest. So many readers have told me what the boys have meant to them, and I am touched by that and do not take it lightly. They are characters who do things I would never do, or want to do. No matter what they went through, their bond never broke. But at the heart of their creation, there is something special, or so I like to believe. A kind of human echo that transcends the page. If I’m giving myself too much credit there, I can live with that. 

It hurts me with joy to see them move on, to slip over into the shadow made by the dark of a literary moon.

But their books are still here, and I hope readers will continue to read and reread them for some time to come. They gave me much happiness to write, and they put beans on our table as well.

Thanks guys. Enjoy your retirement.

Joe R. Lansdale at Big Bear Manor
6/15/26

About the Author

Joe R. Lansdale is the author of nearly four dozen novels, including Rusty Puppy, the Edgar-award winning The Bottoms, Sunset and Sawdust, and Leather Maiden. He has received nine Bram Stoker Awards, the American Mystery Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature. He lives with his family in Nacogdoches, Texas.