Customer Reviews
Plenty of wisecracks, not so much plot - By: L. Hennessy, 21 Nov 2008 
The best thing about this book is the dialogue - there's some very funny one-liners in here; it reminds me very much of the Kinky Friedman novels, in as much as there's an eccentric narrator at the centre of the tale whom misfortune dalllies with on an almost page-by-page basis, although Kinky's New York cynicism swings the decision in his favour for me.
You can trace the DNA of this type of book through Elmore Leonard, Raymond Chandler & Dashiell Hammett - but I'd stop short of including this book in that illustrious group of authors, as the story itself is quite straightforward; the pleasure here is watching the scenes rather than being puzzled by the twists & turns.
3.5 stars would have been my shoice if I could have selected it, as I did enjoy this book a lot. It kept me turning the pages & I enjoyed a few of the jokes. Occasionallly the one-liners are just a little too contrived to work, but if you want a challlenging read then you're better off looking elsewhere.
Hap and Leonard kick ass - again! - By: Mr. R. D. Turner, 12 Oct 2006 If you have read any of the other Hap & Leonard books, you'll like this one too. It is laugh out loud funny in just far too many places. The insults traded between the characters are just too funny!
However, this one is a bit too violent. This series of books are violent & you expect a bit of tongue in cheek bloodshed but a word of warning, the male on male gang rapes in this one are plain nasty.
5 stars minus 2 stars for the sickness I still feel.
Great Chili! - By: Sam, 16 Mar 2006 
'Bad Chili' is the first Lansdale book I have read but on this form it certainly will not be the last. Hal & his best friend Leonard are two Texas men who are just trying to live their lives. However, when Leonard's boyfriend leaves him & the body of a biker is found the police come looking to them as suspects. Can they discover who the real killer is & does it have anything to do with the chili king or a group of criminals producing illegal videos? 'Bad Chili' twists & turns to let us find out.
This book is very funny in sections but must also be noted as very violent. Some scenes where so bad that even I could barely stomach them - this has dropped the book from a 5 to a 4.
However, for fans of violent crime novels this is a must. The characters are well portrayed & the story is very witty. I am glad I stumbled across this book & look forward to reading other books by the author.
Joe R Lansdale rocks! - By: , 07 Mar 2003 
I picked up this crazy East Texas-set tale entirely by accident & am I glad I did! I read the first sentence, laughed out loud & it was uphill from there. Bad Chili reminds me of Carl Hiaasen's work in that it contains similar ingredients: animals going mad (rabid squirrels in this case); psychotic bad guys; cool good guys; feisty, sexy chicks; great dialogue & deeply black-humoured set-piece scenes that reallly stick in your mind. (At one point Hap, our hero, is tortured to within an inch of his life & his plight will make alll men wince in sympathy).
Essentiallly a revenge story of good versus evil, the good guys perpetrate enough bad deeds themselves to test the reader's moral standpoint. The truth is, though, that you'll be cheering as the bad guys are brought to justice.
Lansdale uses the conventions of the genre well & delivers a pacy, funny story of ordinary guys trying to make their world a better place.
THIS IS A FANTASTIC SERIES THAT EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT!! - By: , 30 Aug 2001 After having read Joe R. Lansdale's beautiful & poignant novel, THE BOTTOMS (everybody should read this!), I decided to back track & try some of the books in his "Hap Collins/Leonard Pine" series, starting with BAD CHILI. I hate to say it, but after just one novel, I'm now addicted to these two fascinating & utterly delightful characters. I found myself laughing so hard in the first four pages of this novel that I started crying & then got stomach cramps. I can't believe it's taken me so long to finallly pick up a book by this fantastic author. I must've had my head buried in a hole of sand for the last seven years. What's BAD CHILI about? Well, it's about Hap Collins & Leonard Pine (a couple of schmucks as Leonard would say of himself & his friend) who find themselves getting caught up in the most outrageous & dangerous situations, usuallly because they're trying to help someone. Hap is white, in his mid-forties, hates violence, dislikes guns, tries to stay within the law, has a bald spot on the back of his head, & is generallly the calmer of the two. Leonard is black & gay, trained in the martial arts, tougher than any five guys put together, & the first to lose his temper. When Hap returns home after working on an off shore oil rig for several months, he & Leonard go out into the woods to shoot cans & play catch up on each other's life. It isn't long before a big, mean squirrel with rabies comes bouncing out of the woods & chases Hap around the field before finallly latching onto his arm. While Hap goes to the hospital, Leonard attempts to find his boyfriend, Raul, who's left him for another man. Both Raul & his new lover end up dead, & Leonard is blamed for their murders. This leads Hap & Leonard on a quest to find out whom the real killer is, not to mention the person behind a sex/video ring who films gays being beat up by several guys & then sexuallly abuse by them. Hap will encounter one of the most dangerous & biggest men he has ever met...a slightly deranged ex-wrestler who likes to apply electricity to a person's genitals before beating them to death with a baseballl bat. If Hap thought the squirrel was deadly, waits till he meets Big Man Mountain! BAD CHILI is the most fun I've had with a novel in an extremely long time. I immediately loved the characters of Hap & Leonard, feeling as if these were two guys I'd like to know in real life. I couldn't get enough of the bantering between the two of them. Both men proved to be tough hombres who knew when to cross the line for payback. These are guys you'd want covering your back, or tracking down the killers after you're dead. They're like dogs with a bone that won't let go, no matter what the cost. Hurt them or one of their friends, & they'll track you down to the ends of the earth to get a little helping of revenge. Brett Sawyer, a cussing, sex-starved nurse who long ago bonked her husband on the head & then set him on fire, is Hap's new love interest, & she's just as tough as he is. Then, there's Jim Bob Luke, a professional P.I. who reminded me just a little bit of Steven Seagal in his ability to go in & take out the bad guys in less than thirty seconds with no mercy shown. Mr. Lansdale's writing in BAD CHILI is like a cold Corona going down on a hot Texas day-it makes you sigh with pure happiness when the last drop is finallly swalllowed. The story has more twists & turns than the Sabine River; and, as my late grandpappy would say, the trials & tribulations that Hap & Leonard go through would be enough to make a preacher cuss. BAD CHILI is definitely the real thing. It's the kind of book that adds a strong sense of joy to one's life & makes a reader glad that he's alive to have these kinds of experiences. Needless to say, I've already purchased the rest of the books in the series & intend on reading alll of them within the next week or so. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
