A poor country woman and her kids are being terrorized by Porky, a rampaging hog that keeps breaking out of a neighbor’s pen. For help, she turns to Hap Collins and Leonard Pine in Joel R. Lansdale’s 14th darkly comic novel about the duo, “The Hatchet Girls.”

Hap and Leonard aren’t animal control experts. They, along with Hap’s wife, Brett, are private detectives. But the woman is so distraught that they take pity on her and agree to subdue the enormous creature. It does not go well.

The hog chases the two pals around the yard, crashes into the woman’s house when they seek refuge inside, and trashes the place. The result is perhaps the funniest man vs. beast scene since Mark Wahlberg brawled with his teddy bear in the 2012 movie “Ted.”

Once they manage to get Porky under control, they e

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