Lansdale never disappoints - seriously, he doesn't! - and while this isn't exactly the best book that bears his name, it's still a treat for his fans.

Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire is Joe R. Lansdale's homage to the pulp stories and writers he grew up loving. An anthology of eight short stories that range in style from science fiction, horror, sword & fantasy, and just pure detective fiction.

Not a bad story in the bunch!

While the author does a great job of honoring the works of both Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard (two of his particular favorites), at times he also manages to bring to mind the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.

Reading the stories in this book will introduce the reader to a variety of characters and a multitude of strange beasts: A princess warrior of the planet Venus, a mysterious practioner of the dark arts known simply as Conjure Man, giants, bird-people, old west vampires, red-neck zombies, and Martian ice sharks. This book offers something for just about every taste in the classic pulp spectrum.

I would recommend Dead on the Bones to anyone who enjoys classic short fiction in the fantasy, pulp, or sci-fi genres.

***Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read and review this title.

If you've ever thought to yourself: 'they sure don't write them like they used to' - then this book is for you.

If you've ever longed to read a new, pulp-style adventure story - then this book is for you.

If you've ever wished someone would take up the mantle and write new adventures in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard - then this book is for you.

This book is for me.

I've enjoyed the Joe R. Lansdale books that I've read previously and was excited to get something by him that looked a little different from what I've read before. And not just a little bit like those great Robert E. Howard Conan books I read back in the 1970's and 80's.

This book is a throw-back ... no ... this book is an <em>homage</em> to the great adventure pulp fiction of the 1920's, 30's and 40's. In his introduction, Lansdale writes about his appreciation for Burroughs, growing up on Tarzan and John Carter and Carson Napier, and Lansdale's fondness for these stories and this style is evident by the passion he puts forth in his own stories.

One of the best stories in the collection is the title story "Dead on the Bones" in which our pulp hero boxes with the dead.

"Tarzan and the Land that Time Forgot" is every bit a Tarzan story, as if Burroughs himself had written it and combined Tarzan with the afore-mentioned Carson of Venus and John Carter of Mars.

"The Redheaded Dead" reads much like a Frederic Brown story, though it's dedicated to Robert E. Howard.

I've tried going back and reading some of the old pulp fiction and have found much of it not nearly as exciting as I remembered it being. Lansdale manages to capture the feel of the genre and keeps it interesting to the modern reader as well.

This is highly recommended. It's a collection of short fiction, and it brilliantly captures the tone of the really great adventure heroes and their stories. It's an all-around winner.

Looking for a good book? <em>Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire</em> is a collection of short stories by Joe R. Lansdale that pays tribute to some of the greatest fictional heroes in adventure and fantasy literature while keeping the modern reader delightfully entertained.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

JOE R. LANSDALE. Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire. Subterranean. Hardcover, 296 pages, $40, SubterraneanPress.com.
The prolific master of multiple genres pays tribute to the pulp writers that influenced his formative years. You won’t find any Westerns, per se, but you will see a former buffalo soldier transplanted to Venus and, of course, Lansdale’s heroic Reverend Mercer fighting hell’s minions with his Colt revolvers. But even if you don’t like pulp fiction with a literary edge, Lansdale’s essay on pulps is worth reading.
Published in Roundup Magazine, April 2017, in Fiction Book Reviews, Western Writers of America (www.WesternWriters.org)

Much to my disappointment, this was another DNF collection for me. I've never actually read any of Lansdale's stuff, despite my best intentions, so this seemed like a perfect entry into the pulp side of his world (which interests me far more than his more popular Hap and Leonard tales). With influences ranging from Burrough & Howard to Poe & Lovecraft, this should have been a perfect read for me, but everything I read fell flat. They were dry, humorless stories that simply tried too hard to recapture that classic sense of pulp. I found myself bored, and struggling harder each time to pick it back up and try another story, until I finally gave in an accepted that it wasn't for me.

Return to those thrilling pulp adventures of yesteryear, with champion mojo storyteller Joe Lansdale....


With DEAD ON THE BONES: PULP ON FIRE, Lansdale and publisher Subterranean Press have created a perfect pulp fiction pastiche, expertly capturing the feel of the old stories that Lansdale is paying tribute to. This is a double-edged sword, though...


The collection features eight stories that hit upon a variety of genres: Detective, horror, jungle adventure, noir, and space adventure. When Lansdale is firing on all cylinders, as he does with most of the stories, it's smooth sailing. There were a few personal rough patches, but they might be related to personal genre issues.


I'll get the good out of the way first:


The collection starts off with THE GRUESOME AFFAIR OF THE ELECTRIC BLUE LIGHTNING, which features Poe's Detective Dupin in a macabre mystery that echoes Poe, Shelley, and Lovecraft run through a blender and spiked with hallucinogenics.


NAKED ANGEL is a straightforward detective story involving a cop who finds a dead woman encased in a block of ice.


DEAD ON THE BONES is probably the most "Lansdale" story in the collection. A grim, multifaceted tale of sex, voodoo, and vengeance from beyond the grave, this tale fairly drips with Texas atmosphere. The collection is worth picking up just for this story.


TARZAN AND THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT is exactly what the title implies. I've never read a Burroughs Tarzan novel, so I can't say how well Lansdale replicates the flavor, but I had a good time with this story.


The mediocre and the not-so-good, you ask....?


There are four stories that I didn't care for at all, three of which have science fiction trappings.


First off, there's KING OF THE CHEAP ROMANCE, which finds an amazonian woman battling an ice shark on another planet. Not a terrible story, but one that goes on waaaaay too long, and wears out its welcome quickly.


THE REDHEADED DEAD is a standard weird western, without a surprise in sight.



The final two stories in the collection suffer from guilt-by-association. They are essentially the same story with very slight variations, and are grouped together in the back of the book. UNDER THE WARRIOR STAR is a spin on the venerable pulp trope of "Earthman transported to alien planet", and it reminded me of why my own fascination with the pulps didn't last long. Most of those old stories were written for a penny a word, so they had a LOT of words. Some of them seemed to go on and on and on and on and....kind of like that. This story started out strong, and maintained my interest until about halfway through, when you could almost feel Lansdale decide to replicate that "Paid by the word" feeling by padding the story with details about every aspect of the alien planet and its lifeforms. I didn't bail on the story, but I was sorely tempted to.


Enter the final story of the collection, THE WIZARD OF THE TREES, which, while thankfully briefer, follows almost the exact same story template: Earth man mysteriously transported to alien planet meets a brother and sister and joins them in their quest. Shorter and easier to digest, but grouping these two together at the end of the book was a huge mistake.


Overall, DEAD ON THE BONES: PULP ON FIRE is a fun collection, and showcases Lansdale's ability to write in a variety of styles. It nets a solid seven out of ten devil heads:

😈😈😈😈😈😈😈


Subterranean Press provided a review copy.

Joe R. Lansdale is one of the American authors where the influence from the pulp magazines and novels remains so well pronounced. Even in his most famous novels like The Bottoms, there is a grittiness that thinly disguises the pulp world. It can be easily argued that his mystery novel duo, Hap and Leonard, would have been very happy in the pages of a hard-boiled detective fiction magazine. Dead on the Bones; Pulp on Fire starts with an introduction where the author discusses his love for the old pulp writers. But he makes clear another influence to emerge in his childhood of the 50s, television, is what really ignited his love for the pulps. I never thought of it before but programs like Flash Gordon and all those westerns were visual pulp. I do not think it is coincidence that the pulp influence for Lansdale is most pronounced in his mystery/crime noir works and his western novels.

Dead on the Bones; Pulp on Fire is all pulp though. It is best to think of this as a tribute. The twelve works of fiction included in the collection, with one exception which we will get to later, breathes more pulp than Lansdale. Three stories are heavily influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs, an author that Lansdale singles out in the introduction. One of the works, "Tarzan and the Land That Time Forgot" is a pastiche blending together the Tarzan tales , Pellucidar, and another Burroughs creation mentioned in the title."Under the Warrior Star" and "The Wizard of Trees" are more original but are definitely in the style of Burroughs and other writers of early pulp fiction. The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue Lighting" blends Edgar Allen Poe's amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin with a hint of Lovecraft. "The Redheaded Dead" and "King of the Cheap Romance" are dedicated to Robert E. Howard and Ardath Mayhar respectively. "Naked Angel" would fit well in any horror or suspense pulp magazine. In the later years, I would like to believe Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine would have picked it up despite its supernatural tones..

Which leaves the title story, "Dead on the Bones". This story of conjured fighting matches feels the most like Lansdale. Its setting and imagine plot fits well with anything he writes thus it is all Lansdale. It is my pick for best fiction in the collection.

Not that the other stories aren't good . They are quite good. And I especially liked "Under the Warrior Star" which, again from the introduction, seems to be a very early story by the author recently revamped. If you are a fan of Burroughs or the Weird Tales roster of writers you will really enjoy this. While it may not be what some would call typical Lansdale, I still recommend it for the nostalgic feel and the imaginative storytelling.