Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust (USA 2007)

From the Publisher:
In the middle of a cyclone, beautiful, red-haired Sunset Jones shoots her husband Pete dead when he tries to beat and rape her. To Camp Rapture's general consternation, Sunset's mother-in-law arranges for her to take over from Pete as town constable. As if that weren't hard enough to swallow in depression era east Texas, Sunset actually takes the job seriously, and her investigation into a brutal double murder pulls her into a maelstrom of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice. It is a case that will require a well of inner strength she never knew she had. Spirited and electrifying, Sunset and Sawdust is a mystery and a tale like nothing you've read before.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 9780307428028 (December, 2007), 795 KB (ca. 338 p.), $9.95.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust (UK 2005)

From the Publisher:
When Pete Jones, the local constable, is shot dead, his widow, Sunset, finds herself in his job, investigating a series of brutal murders. Most of the townsfolk object to her wearing Pete's gun and badge, some because this is the 1930s and they think a woman's place is in the home, others because it was Sunset who blew off Pete's head in the first place. As much a modern western as a murder mystery, SUNSET & SAWDUST features a cast of outlandish characters -- gun-men, hobos, sheriffs, hookers, migrants and coloured families struggling to make living under the malevolent eyes of the Ku Klux Klan. Sunset's investigation leads her and her friends into a labyrinth of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice. Nothing and no-one are quite what they seem in Texas.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust. Phoenix, ISBN: 0753819937 (October, 2005), 392 p., £6.99.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust (USA 2005)

From the Publisher:
In the middle of a cyclone, beautiful, red-haired Sunset Jones shoots her husband Pete dead when he tries to beat and rape her. To Camp Rapture's general consternation, Sunset's mother-in-law arranges for her to take over from Pete as town constable. As if that weren't hard enough to swallow in depression era east Texas, Sunset actually takes the job seriously, and her investigation into a brutal double murder pulls her into a maelstrom of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice. It is a case that will require a well of inner strength she never knew she had. Spirited and electrifying, Sunset and Sawdust is a mystery and a tale like nothing you've read before.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, ISBN: 9780375719226 (January, 2005), 321 p., $13.95.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust (UK 2004)

From the Publisher:
Joe R. Landsdale's new novel is a gripping crime thriller set in Texas at the start of the 1930s oil boom.
When Pete Jones, the local constable, is shot dead, his widow, Sunset, finds herself in his job, investigating a series of brutal murders. Most of the townsfolk object to her wearing Pete's gun and badge, some because this is the 1930s and they think a woman's place is in the home, others because it was Sunset who blew off Pete's head in the first place.

As much a modern western as a murder mystery, SUNSET & SAWDUST features a cast of outlandish characters -- gun-men, hobos, sheriffs, hookers, migrants and coloured families struggling to make living under the malevolent eyes of the Ku Klux Klan. Sunset's investigation leads her and her friends into a labyrinth of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice. Nothing and no-one are quite what they seem in Texas.

SUNSET & SAWDUST is a wildly energetic novel and Sunset Jones is an unforgettable heroine.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN: 0297829645 (October, 2004), 321 p., £12.99.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust (USA 2004)

From the Publisher:
He has been called "hilarious... refreshing... a terrifically gifted storyteller with a sharp country-boy wit" (Washington Post Book World), and praised for his "folklorist's eye for telling detail and [his] front-porch raconteur's sense of pace" (New York Times Book Review). Now, Joe R. Landsdale gives us a fast-moving, electrifying new novel: a murder mystery set in a steamy backwater of Depression-era East Texas.

It begins with an explosion: Sunset Jones kills her husband with a bullet to the brain. Never mind that he was raping her. Pete Jones was constable of the small sawmill town of Camp Rapture ("Camp Rupture" to the local blacks), where no woman, least of all Pete's, refuses her husband what he wants.

So most everyone is surprised and angry when, thanks to the unexpected understanding of her mother-in-law - three-quarter owner of the mill - Sunset is named the new constable. And they're even more surprised when she dares to take the job seriously: beginning an investigation into the murder of a woman and an unborn baby whose oil-drenched bodies are discovered buried on land belonging to the only black landowner in town. Yet no one is more surprised than Sunset herself when the murders lead her - through a labyrinth of greed, corruption, and unspeakable malice - not only to the shocking conclusion of the case, but to a well of inner strength she never knew she had.

Landsdale brings the thick backwoods and swamps of East Texas vividly to life, and he paints a powerfully evocative picture of a time when Jim Crow and the Klan ruled virtually unopposed, when the oil boom was rolling into and over Texas, when any woman who didn't know her place was considered a threat and a target. In Sunset, he gives us a woman who defies all expectations, wrestling a different place for herself with spirit and spit, cunning and courage. And in Sunset and Sawdust he gives us a wildly energetic novel - galvanizing from first to last.

Joe R. Lansdale: Sunset and Sawdust. Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN: 0375414533 (March, 2004), 321 p., $22.00.