Coco Butternut -- Joe R. Lansdale

Coco Butternut is a novella, or maybe it's a novelette (I'm confused about those terms) that brings back Hap and Leonard in another of their strange cases.  This time, a funeral director's mother's dead dog has been kidnapped, and he wants Hap to deliver the ransom money.  Yes, you read that right.  The dog is dead.  It's been disinterred and spirited away.  The mother is dead, too, but never mind that.

Leonard thinks there's something fishy about the case from the beginning, and he's right.  The money gets delivered, the coffin has the dog's body in it, but there's more.  There's a false bottom in the coffin, and it conceals another body.  This leads Hap and Leonard to go to talk to the funeral director at his home, but he's dead, murdered.  Things start to get complicated, and you can bet that there's going to be plenty of trouble before it's all over.  You can also bet that Hap and Leonard and Chance and Brett will get it all sorted out, but not before there's a lot of weirdness, action, and wisecracking.  Lots of fun, and something to tide you over until the next full-length Hap and Leonard novel appears.