Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Book Summary and Reviews of Ranchero by Rick Gavin

Ranchero by Rick Gavin

Ranchero

A Mystery

by Rick Gavin

  • Critics' Consensus (3):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2011, 272 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

In Rick Gavin's rollicking series debut set squarely in the Mississippi Delta, Nick Reid has a simple job to do:  repossess a flat screen TV from Percy Dwayne Dubois - pronounced "Dew-boys," front-loaded and hick specific.  But Percy Dwayne wouldn't give in, no; he saw fit to go, the way his sort will, all white-trash philosophical and decided the world was stacked against him anyway.  He hit Nick over the head with a fireplace shovel, tied him up with a length of lamp cord, and stole the mint-condition calypso coral-colored 1969 Ranchero that Nick had borrowed from his landlady.  And he took the TV with him.

Nick and his best friend Desmond, fellow repo man in Indianola, Mississippi, have no choice but to go after him.  The fact that the trail eventually leads to Guy, a meth cooker recently set up in the Delta after the Feds ran him out of New Orleans, is of no consequence - Nick will do anything to get the Ranchero back.  And it turns out he might have to.

A unputdownable road-trip of a crime novel - most of it in Desmond's ex-wife's Geo - Ranchero is a fantastic series debut for fans of Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block, and Carl Hiaasen.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Full of inspired comic hyperbole, Gavin's rollicking debut does for the Mississippi Delta what Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiaasen do for Florida... Readers will eagerly await Reid's next adventure in the Delta." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Gavin's first novel is a sure winner. Reminiscent of Tim Dorsey's Serge Storms series but with a more likable protagonist, it will appeal to down-home good old boys and their armchair counterparts." - Library Journal

"Starred Review. This first novel from Gavin is a little miracle. The dialogue is pitch-perfect… One of the most enjoyable crime debuts in a very long time." - Booklist

"[A] testosterone-fueled romp... Forget comparisons to other books. The closest you've ever come to Nick's experience is sitting in a Florida drive-in theater circa 1958." - Kirkus Reviews

This information about Ranchero was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Information

When he's not writing, Rick Gavin frames houses and hangs sheetrock in Ruston, Louisiana. Ranchero is his first novel.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more mysteries...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
    by Lynda Cohen Loigman
    Lynda Cohen Loigman's delightful novel The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern opens in 1987. The titular ...
  • Book Jacket: Small Rain
    Small Rain
    by Garth Greenwell
    At the beginning of Garth Greenwell's novel Small Rain, the protagonist, an unnamed poet in his ...
  • Book Jacket: Daughters of Shandong
    Daughters of Shandong
    by Eve J. Chung
    Daughters of Shandong is the debut novel of Eve J. Chung, a human rights lawyer living in New York. ...
  • Book Jacket: The Women
    The Women
    by Kristin Hannah
    Kristin Hannah's latest historical epic, The Women, is a story of how a war shaped a generation ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Who Said...

The only completely consistent people are the dead

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.