

Lansdale, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and. Trying to escape her worthless life leads to unexpected and disastrous consequences when Sue Ellen steals money. Edge of Dark Water study guide contains a biography of Joe R. For those new to Lansdale's work, this novel will serve as a good intro: entertaining, eerie and soaked with the East Texas period atmosphere Lansdale owns like no other writer. Available in National Library (Singapore).


Perhaps his more rabid fans could read Edge of Dark Water with theirs shut, too - but that is what keeps them coming back for more. In a 2010 Texas Observer essay on noir, Lansdale wrote, "East Texas has its own kind of dark side That's my beat, here in the shadows and sticky heat, nestled up tight as a hungry chigger in a fat man's armpit."īy now Lansdale can walk this beat with his eyes shut. “Now if we could get the clergy here and the mayor, we’d have the perfect pile to smell.”) Along the river chase, readers will pick up on nods to Homer, Dickey, Twain and others, but the brooding East Texas atmosphere is all Lansdale: the specter of Skunk is like something out of a horror movie man and nature both provide plenty of thrills and chills the mystery of who killed May Lynn is given just enough attention and Sue Ellen’s precocious teen wisdom and bumpkin delivery provides the laughs (“That’s the law for you,” she says when Constable Sy shows up drunk. Lansdale is the author of more than a dozen novels, including Vanilla Ride, Leather Maiden, Sunset and Sawdust, and Lost Echoes.
