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Ranchero

by Rick Gavin
Minotaur: St. Martin's. Nov. 2011. c.258p. ISBN 9780312583187. $24.99. M
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Nick Reid leads a low-key life, doing odd jobs at a rental store in the backwater Mississippi Delta, until his boss sends him out to repossess a television from no-account Percy Dwayne Dubois. Unable to imagine life without his TV, Percy Dwayne hits Nick upside the head with a fireplace shovel and, with TV, wife, and son in tow, makes a hasty escape in Nick's borrowed classic calypso coral 1969 Ford Ranchero. Thus begins a four-day trek across the Delta in search of Percy Dwayne and the stolen Ranchero, gathering along the way as unlikely a gaggle of backwoods hangers-on as ever peopled a story of redneck derring-do. Along the way, the group encounters corrupt law enforcement officers, drug addicts, meth lords, and other unsavory characters who detain and distract but never permanently interrupt the quest.
VERDICT 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. Recommended. [A Minotaur First Edition Selection; library marketing.]
Reviewed by Thomas L. Kilpatrick, Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale , Aug 01, 2011
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