Joe R. Lansdale's books can be hard-boiled, but this one is cracked at the shell. It's entertaining enough, being a naturalistic snapshot of small-town America. We can thank its narrator for that. It's always entertaining to hear the views of an alcoholic, sex-addicted, obsessive-compulsive misfit.

That narrator, Cason Statler, is an Iraq war veteran, coming home in hopes that his family and former girlfriend will soothe his disturbed mind. He's a Pulitzer Prize-nominated reporter and smart enough to know that alienated war buddies and booze make things worse. Buddies such as Booger, who wants to hire him at his Oklahoma bar and gun range.

Booger is maniacally happy, amoral but ethical. When he kills people he cleans up afterward. But despite his ethics and neatness he's a psychopath, and Cason, being only neurotic and unstable, still believes in the Land of the Happy Neighborhoods. In fact, driving down the highway, he sees his East Texas hometown of Camp Rapture appearing in the mist as the Emerald City.

But at home he doesn't get a hero's welcome. His new boss at the second-rate newspaper, the Camp Rapture Record, condescends to him. His family members needle him for his bad habits even though he has a job and has quit boozing.

His former fiancée curses him and threatens to get a restraining order. We don't exactly know why but it doesn't matter. She's not relevant to the book anyway. Second day on the job, he gets a new love partner, Belinda (her unlucky day).

Cason's boss, Mrs. Tipson, and his brother Jimmy, a history professor at the local college, have become successful in the traditional way: by rising above their ethics. Like Reverend Dinkins, the local television evangelist.

Among other things, Reverend Dinkins happens to be traducing the Seventh Commandment with a gorgeous college student and church member, Caroline Allison. The traducing is captured on video. The biblical offense gains potential criminal implications, however, when she suspiciously disappears.

Other upstanding townsmen are worried, too. Caroline is on a truckload of videos giving her all to the entire male history faculty at the local college, including Cason's perfect brother. When blackmail rears its ugly head, Cason swings into his Iraq attack mode.

Mysteries usually begin with a drop of blood and end up with a barrel full. But Mr. Lansdale, who resides in Nacogdoches, tells this one Texas-style. It's a tall tale so boldly preposterous that we're too enthralled to notice the duplicity. It's a puzzle, a game, a carnival act of murder and mayhem.

Cason and Booger sleuth it all out like perverted Hardy Boys. And when it's over there's death aplenty but where's the blood? Don't ask. There's no blood in the Emerald City.

NPR commentator Tom Dodge, www.tomdodge books.com, lives in Midlothian.

Joe R. Lansdale (Knopf, $25)