In this standalone, Edgar-award winning author, Joe R. Lansdale, whom "few can match" (Booklist) beams a light on an East Texas town where a QAnon-style, evangelist cult is brewing trouble. Charlie Garner has a bad feeling. His ex-wife, Meg, has been missing for over a week and one quick peek into her home shows all her possessions packed up in boxes. Neighbors claim she's running from bill collectors, but Charlie suspects something more sinister is afoot. Meg was last seen working at the local donut shop, a business run by a shadow group most refer to as 'The Saucer People'; a space-age, evangelist cult who believe their compound to be the site of an extraterrestrial Second Coming. Along with his brother, Felix, and beautiful, randy journalist Amelia "Scrappy" Moon, Charlie uncovers strange and frightening details about the compound (read: a massive, doomsday storehouse of weapons, a leashed chimpanzee!) When the body of their key informer is found dead with his arms ripped out of their sockets, Charlie knows he's in danger but remains dogged in his quest to rescue Meg. Brimming with colorful characters and Lansdale's characteristic bounce, this rollicking crime novel examines the insidious rise of fringe groups and those under their sway with black comedy and glints of pathos.
A compelling and enjoyable read.
I haven't read a lot of Joe R. Lansdale's work, just a few short stories prior to this novel, but I'd become familiar enough with it that I had a good idea of what to expect from "The Donut Legion."
For those unfamiliar, Mr. Lansdale is the sort of author who tends to blend a lot of different elements into his writing, regardless of any particular established genre he might be focusing on with a given effort. Hence, "The Donut Legion," despite primarily being a crime-thriller mystery, also has elements of horror, the paranormal, and comedy, not to mention various bits of social commentary on topics such as religion, politics, and small-town America.
The end result is a book that does a lot of different things. For me, the vast majority of those explorations were interesting, entertaining, and generally well-executed as the tale moved along at a brisk pace, often switching tone in attempts to better tackle the subject being presented. That said, there were a few occasions were I found some of those tonal shifts a bit out of place or jarring, or when some of the concepts and themes weren't as thoroughly examined as I would have preferred. I'd say a lot of the latter occurred as a result of the author using certain scenarios in attempts to nudge readers or explicitly state his own point of view rather than simply presenting the details of the story and encouraging them to come to their own conclusions. This reminded me of Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land," where the author's own thoughts and beliefs so thoroughly permeated the story and characters that they at times felt more like stand-ins for him. I think Lansdale gets away with that a bit more in "The Donut Legion" by penning the two characters that most often act in that capacity as similar brothers, with one of them literally being an author at least somewhat akin to himself.
In any case, I had a good time with this book and would absolutely recommend it to anyone looking for something with a lot of compelling facets that come together nicely, or who'd simply like to explore Lansdale's extensive catalogue of fiction as I believe it would make a good, solid starting point.