Joe Lansdale is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. He excels at developing memorable characters, and his plots are unusual.

Both of these books are set in East Texas–“Sunset and Sawdust” in the 1930s Depression, “Lost Echoes” in the present.

“Lost Echoes” is a 2007 book in the Vintage Crime / Black Lizard imprint–the 99th Black Lizard book I’ve read. The protagonist, Harry Wilkes, has the ability to “see” terrible events which occurred in whatever place he’s in–murders, rapes, car accidents, domestic violence. A vision takes over, and it’s like he’s there watching it happen.

This takes over his life. He keeps a notebook detailing places to avoid, lest he get entrapped in another vision. Alcohol is one way to keep the visions at bay.

Harry meets up with another alcoholic, a very interesting guy named Tad who’s also a martial artist, and they both climb on the wagon together.

Harry’s childhood crush, Kayla, enters the picture, and they set about trying to solve the murder of her father many years before. Other people come and go, and you’re not sure what role they play in the story, but there’s a role of some kind.

It’s a good story. The ending gets a bit crazy, but I say that in a good way.

“Sunset and Sawdust,” written in 2004, begins with a woman–named Sunset, because of her red hair–shooting her husband in the head while he’s beating and raping her (and while a tornado is taking their house apart). He’s the police constable, and when they need a new one, she ends up getting the job. Not without opposition.

This book is a companion of sorts to “The Bottoms,” an astoundingly good book set in East Texas during the Depression. Both show the extreme racism of that time and place, with blacks cowering in subservience, always knowing they can get lynched for practically anything. His black characters are compelling.

Lansdale develops at an unhurried pace, introducing new characters only after you’ve had time to get acquainted with the previous ones. Two bodies are found, and Sunset and her makeshift police force try to unravel what happened. It gets complicated. Some people die, some live. The story resolved to my complete satisfaction.

“Sunset and Sawdust” is a better book than “Lost Echoes,” but “The Bottoms” is the best of the three.

Henning Mankell’s nine-book series about Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander begins in January 1990. Wallander is 42, divorced, a father, and has risen through the police ranks. He started out in Malmo, then transferred to the smaller city of Ystad, where all of the Wallander books occur. So there’s a lot we don’t know about Wallander.

“The Pyramid: The First Wallander Cases” fills in the blanks with five stories which span the year from 1969, when Wallander is a 21-year-old patrolman, to the first Wallander book, “The Faceless Killers.” I expected a somewhat disjointed book. And yet, the five stories hold together real well as a whole.

“Wallander’s First Case” (100 pages) occurs in 1969 when our protagonist is patrolman in Malmo, preparing to transfer to the detective division. He looks into an apparent suicide in his apartment building, and it turns into a murder mystery. We also meet his fiance, Mona, and we can tell this marriage won’t work out.

“The Man with the Mask” occurs on Christmas Eve in 1975. Wallander is married to Mona, has a daughter (Linda), and will soon begin a new job in Ystad. This 30-page story finds him confronting a robber/killer at a gas station. It’s a fascinating piece.

“The Man on the Beach” occurs in Ystad in 1985. It’s a simple, interesting little murder mystery. Wallander’s marriage is on the rocks.

“The Death of the Photographer” (60 pages) occurs in 1987. Wallander is now divorced.

The final story, “The Pyramid,” occurs in 1989. It’s a large plot involving international drug-running, and has the feel of a full-blown Wallander book condensed into 160 pages. The book ends with Wallander receiving an early morning call about a new murder, which is the beginning of “The Faceless Killers.”

The five stories tell a lot about Wallander, and are interesting stories in themselves. I particularly liked the two 30-page stories. I wasn’t expecting a lot from this book, and was pleasantly surprised.

“Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood,” left me in tears. It really did.

Donovan Campbell led the platoon called Joker One during five months in 2004 in Ramadi, a major city in Iraq’s Anbar Province. When they arrived in March 2004, a year after the invasion, things were dangerous, yet fairly calm. But the insurgency exploded in April and continued until Joker One left in September…and it then continued for a couple more years. Their battalion took more casualties than any battalion–Marine or Army–since Vietnam.

The book’s subtitle says it well: a story of courage, leadership, and brotherhood.

I was initially conscious of the leadership part–Campbell’s leadership, starting in the States with pre-deployment training. He led by example, with strength, and with sensitivity. I realized that he would make a good pastor; in many ways, he was a shepherd for his men. And it was servant leadership. He was there to serve and protect his men. That theme prevailed throughout the book.

The first 150 pages take place in the States and in the early days of their time in Ramadi. Then, with the section titled “Fierce,” come 150 pages of regular combat. You see the grind of daily fighting take its toll on the men, and on Campbell. You also see the professionalism, strength, competence, morality, and awesome firepower of the American soldier.

There is nothing flashy about Campbell’s writing. But he communicates with authenticity. He clearly acknowledges his own failings, and doesn’t dwell on the things he does well. He earned a Bronze Star with Valor, but he never mentions it in the book.

Campbell (left) throws some deserved barbs at Paul Bremer, the civilian leader whose decisions caused so much havoc in Iraq. During the summer of battle, with friends dying around him, he muses about people in the States obliviously heading out on their vacations. In August, “America focused on something totally incomprehensible to us–the 2004 Summer Olympics.” It shows  how much the war had been removed from our minds.

Campbell muses occasionally on spiritual subjects, and in evangelical terminology, though he never explicitly identifies himself as a Christian or even as a man of faith. I found that most interesting.

Near the end, in chapter 37, he talks in biblical language about love and sacrifice. It’s an amazing chapter–my favorite, the one that choked me up–as he reflects on Joker One.

“For me, then, loving Joke One–something I so desperately hoped that I did–meant much more than simply feeling that I cared. It meant patience when explaining something for the fifth time to a 19-year-old who just didn’t get it. It meant kindness when dealing with a Marine who had made an honest mistake while trying his hardest; mercy when deciding the appropriate punishment. It meant dispensing justice and then forgetting that it had been dispensed, punishing wrong and then wiping the slate clean.

“Love was joy at the growth of my men, even when it diminished my own authority. It was giving the credit for our successes to the team while assuming all the responsibility for our failures on myself. It was constantly teaching my men, sharing everything with them until I had nothing left to give, with the expectation and the hope that they would become greater then me. It was making myself less so that they might become more. Love accepted the Marines for exactly who they were and never believed that it was all they would be….

“So that was how we loved those who hated us; blessed those who persecuted us; daily laid down our lives for our neighbors….Now I understand more about what it means to truly love, and what it means to love your neighbor–how you can do it even when your neighbor literally tries to kill you.” He mentions Bolding, a Marine killed while trying to protect some Iraqi children. “Bolding had lived out the greater-love principle to its fullest possible extent.”

Campbell writes in the tradition of the soldier-poet, rather than of the foul-mouthed sergeant telling it like it is. He’s authentic and introspective, and I felt I truly learned a lot about the American soldier.