Hap Collins and Leonard Pine are best friends, yet they couldn’t be more different. Hap is an East Texas white boy with a weakness for women. Leonard is a gay, black Vietnam vet. Together, they steer up more commotion than a fire storm. But that’s just the way they like it. 
When an ex-flame of Hap’s returns promising a huge score, Hap lets Leonard in on the scam, and that’s when things get interesting.

I’m thirty-four years late arriving at the Hap and Leonard party but I’m glad finally to be here.

For me, the most surprising thing about this energetic, dryly amusing novella is the date that it was first published. Apart from the absence of smartphones, this feels as fresh as if it was written yesterday in terms of style and pace. The only thing that told me that it was published in 1990 was that Hap and Leonard lived through the 1960s and came out the other end as changed men.

When it was published this book must have been far outside the political mainstream, especially for East Texas, and yet it manages to come across as apolitical, as opting out of the bullshit and into taking care of the things that make a difference to you and yours.

From the beginning I could see why this series is so popular: the dialogue sparkles without feeling cute or staged, Hap and Leonard have an unlikely but completely believable friendship. Hap is a straight white man who dropped out of college so he could protest the Vietnam war by declingin the draft and Leonard is a gay, black man who is a decorated Vietnam veteran. What they have in common is that they’ve both arrived at a bullshit-free place in their lives where they do what needs to be done and have one another’s backs while they’re doing it. Until Trudy, Hap’s ex-wife, turns up. Trudy is… well… trouble on two legs but two very nice legs and Leonard knows that whatever she wants from Hap, it is not going to end well.

Add in an East Texas treasure hunt, some burnt-out (and in one case, burnt-up) 1960s Hippy domestic terrorists and a bad guy who loves to kill and you have one hell of a party.

The plot is simple but effective and still has a surprise or two along the way. The body count is high and the action is vividly described. The violence was like a thunderstorm that I could feel coming for a long time before it arrived. That still didn’t prepare me for the explosion of pain and death that announced its arrival.

The story is told entirely from Hap’s point of view, which keeps the focus tight while still allowing some time for introspection and some rumination on the path that brought Hap from a fired-up true believer to the plateau of passion-free pragmatism he currently inhabits.

I enjoyed ‘Savage Season‘ as a short, fast, thriller but what I liked most was the relationship between Hap and Leonard. The dialogue between them is wonderful and yet never seems contrived. They share a sense of humour that they both use to cope with all the crap that people throw at them. I’ll be back to visit with them again soon.