Review: A writer investigates a UFO cult in East Texas

“The Donut Legion,” by Joe R. Lansdale (Mulholland)

Charlie Garner, a former private detective turned novelist, was staring through his telescope at the rural East Texas sky late one night when he received an unexpected visit from his ex-wife, Meg.

Or did he?

A storm had left the ground soft, perfect for leaving footprints and tire tracks, but in the morning there was no sign that she had ever been there. Had it been a dream? A hallucination? An apparition?

Charlie was still in love with Meg, who’d left him to marry another man, and what she’d come to tell him — if he hadn’t imagined it — was disturbing. She thought her husband had been murdered, and she wanted him to look into it.

As the plot of Joe R. Lansdale’s “The Donut Legion” gets rolling, Charlie is shaken but uncertain that there is anything to it at first. But soon, he learns that both Meg and her husband have disappeared, leaving all of their possessions behind.

Charlie’s suspicions turn to The Saucer People, a cult that had persuaded hundreds of gullible Texans to surrender their worldly goods and wait for flying saucers to carry them to paradise. The group was also known as The Donut Legion because it was laundering money through a string of local donut shops.