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Captain Outrageous

I think like many book series, you can’t start mid-series. I read many glowing reviews of this book and most of them mention the previous books. Coming into this fresh (I’d not heard of Joe R. Lansdale), the characters and the plot seemed very thin, although the earlier books probably established these elements. When I first started the book, it seemed like a strange amalgam of political correctness, graphic violence, and Fletch-like irreverence. As the story progresses, however, dreadful scene piles on dreadful scene until the book comes across as truly sadistic.

There is an ugly American (Billy) who seeks to humiliate a Mexican girl in the most unpleasant and crude matter. The reader endures many pages of this behavior. I suppose these scenes are intended to justify Hap Collins and Leonard Pine brutally assaulting this guy again and again and again. Finally, Hap literally spreads his own feces on Billy’s face, beats him, and makes him stand in the corner. And then does it again. This comes in a scene right after our “heroes” discover a girl that’s been dismembered with a machete. The reader is treated to an explanation of where the individual pieces of the girl are located about the hotel room. The graphic violence continues up until the final chapter of the novel.

Oh, did I mention that the book opens with a brutal beating of another girl whom Hap saves? Unfortunately for the girl, Hap doesn’t save her until after she’s been repeatedly raped, had her face “stomped in,” her nipple bitten off, jaw crushed, teeth knocked out, and lost an eye.

Wow. Is this a fun read? I guess it’s not my cup of tea.