Identify the Stylist

Think of this as the literary equivalent of the old game show Name That Tune.  Can you identify the writer of the following passage based on its stylistic hallmarks?

Bill began to consider the angles.

One angle he was sure of was, now that his mother had died at the age of about ten million, there wouldn't be any more checks signed by her for cashing.  He had practiced writing her name until he had worn out about a half dozen ballpoint pens, but never could feel confident about the way he put it down.  The checks had started to stack up now, all the way to seven, and he didn't think he could get away with forgery.  His mother had relished a distinct style in penmanship that only a chicken scratching in cow shit might duplicate with authenticity.

The old gal had been right enough and mean enough six months earlier, but one night, after watching Championship Wrestling, perhaps due to excitement over a particularly heated contest, or an overly vigorous inhalement of gummy bears, which she stuffed into her bony body as if they were the fruit of life, she had gone to bed and hadn't gotten up again.

Bill thought at first he ought to report it.  Then it came to him that if he did he'd lose the house and wouldn't have any place to live.  His mother owned everything, and except for a bit she doled out to him on check-cashing day, providing him with a roof and food to eat, there was nothing else.  She hadn't left anything to him in her will.  She had donated it all to some kind of veterinarian research thing so cats could be saved from bad livers or some such shit.

Frankly, Bill didn't give a flying damn about a bunch of cat livers or any part of a cat.  The little bastards could die for all he cared.  He'd certainly taken care of all his mother's cats after her death.  Unless the fuckers had sprouted gills, or had scissors to get out of those rock-weighted tow sacks he put them in, he figured they were resting pleasantly at the bottom of the Sabine River.  No liver trouble, no problems whatsoever.

No, he didn't think he ought to call the authorities and tell them his mother was dead.  It seemed wiser to turn up the air conditioner in her room and keep that fan blowing and be quiet.  Only thing was, now the electricity bill had come twice, then a notice, and then it had been cut off, and with no juice Mama began to stink something furious.  He put a big black trash bag over her feet, up to her waist, and pulled one over her head, tied them together where they met at the waist with one of her robe belts.  But that didn't hold the stink in worth a damn.  He poured a whole bottle of Brut cologne over her, and that helped some.  She smelled like a sixteen-year-old boy on his way to his first date.

(Keep scrolling down to find out the author of this passage)


The conniving but bumbling character...


The sardonic narration...


The sordid situation, presented in grotesque detail...


The East Texas setting...


...This could only be the work of Joe R. Lansdale (hisownself).  The passage comes from the opening chapter of his 1999 novel Freezer Burn (pp. 4-5 in the Mysterious Press hardcover edition).  And if you haven't read this book yet, you've missed out on a real treat.  Plot-wise, it reads like a cross between James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Tod Browning's Freaks, but it's all Lansdale in terms of narrative voice.  You won't have to worry about freezer burn if you pick up this carnival-noir novel, because your fingers will be turning the pages much too quickly.