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    Ranchero: A Crime Novel
    Unavailable
    Ranchero: A Crime Novel
    Unavailable
    Ranchero: A Crime Novel
    Audiobook5 hours

    Ranchero: A Crime Novel

    Written by Rick Gavin

    Narrated by David Carpenter

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Repo man Nick Reid will do anything to retrieve his landlady's stolen Ranchero in a wild race across the Mississippi Delta in this unforgettable series debut

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 25, 2011
    ISBN9780307989680
    Unavailable
    Ranchero: A Crime Novel
    Author

    Rick Gavin

    RICK GAVIN is the alter-ego of writer T. R. Pearson. The author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including the acclaimed novels A Short History of a Small Place, Polar, and Blue Ridge, he lives in Virginia. Nowhere Nice is his third Nick Reid novel, after Ranchero and Beluga.

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    Reviews for Ranchero

    3.5/5

    54 ratings20 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      RANCHERO (2011) by Rick Gavin is one of those finds you manage to stumble across and are glad you did. I found it in a used book store and snatched it up. We were out of town and somehow I had forgotten to bring along my current read. The cover artwork wasn’t great but the coral pink Ranchero car/wagon/truck is shown at a rakish angle, what looks at first glance like a flaming guitar is shown as a sign for a night club (the flames are actually music notes coming out of the guitar) and the whole scene gives off a feeling of danger, sex, and action.Nick Reid is a repo man working in the Mississippi delta area. A former cop out east, Nick is more than a bit down on his luck. He does have a best friend, fellow repo man Desmond, a large, laid back home grown inhabitant of the eastern shores of the delta who is there for Nick when a repo job goes way south on him. Not only doesn’t Nick get neither the big screen television or the money due, he is clonked on the noggin with a fireplace shovel and his ride, the Ranchero, is stolen.This book is a fun ride through an area of America most people are not familiar with and probably never will be. Mr. Gavin has populated the book with Creoles and idiots and enough uncles and cousins to fit out any decent reunion. The humor is dark, there is a smattering of Sonic drive-ins (Desmond’s favorite eatery) strewn here and there, and twists more plentiful then a rollercoaster. Mr. Gavin has managed to take one borrowed car and built a unique story around it that is surprisingly fun.Needless to say, the book I had been reading had to wait a while to be finished. You never know what great surprises await you in a used book store. By the way, there are two more books in the Nick Reid series so I suppose I’ll have to hunt them out and see if this was a one off or the start of something big.
    • 5/5
      VERY FUNNY!!!!
      There are so many hysterical one liners in this book
      coming at once, one right after the other, boom boom boom, it was hard to catch all of them. This will definitely require more than one listen through.

      The narrative story is so utterly irreverent towards everyone included, I absolutely would not recommend it to those who are easily offended, because offended you will indeed be! On the other hand, if you are able to listen with a modicum of salt, you will be able to enjoy it for what it is: an absolutely hysterical story about a bunch of crazy and near crazy Southerners a-livin and reaking total havoc down in the Delta Bayou.

      The narrator is excellent, providing the listener with the best possible listening experience for this type of story: energetic and just spot on with his excellent well paced delivery. Very versatile with his interpretations of the various and sundry unquestionably questionable characters! Because of this, I highly recommend listening over reading this book to enjoy a much richer experience.

      So many parts of this book were just too funny for words! For the not too feint of heart, who are able to not take things, or themselves, too seriously, and are willing to let out a healthy loud guffaw or two, I robustly recommend this audiobook!
    • 4/5
      ********THIS WAS A GOODREADS.COM CONTEST WIN!!!!!!!!!!**********

      This was a good interesting read. The author had captured my interest in the book from the beginning. With the talk about the area, culture, and life in part of the southern states makes this book come to life. I do not know a lot about the area described in the book but the author had the agriculture correct. I highly recommend this book to people that like to read crime-mystery.

      ********THIS WAS A GOODREADS.COM CONTEST WIN!!!!!!!!!!**********
    • 3/5
      Ranchero is Rick Gavin's debut novel and, fun as it is most of the time, it shows in places. I'm in Florida, home of Hiaasen, Barry and Dorsey, and I'm no stranger to bizarre characters and over-the-top situations. As we follow repo man and ex-cop Nick Reid in his effort to recover his landlady's stolen Ranchero, we get a real sense of life in the Mississippi Delta and the whacked-out people who live there. The plot gets muddied in the middle but, like the clinically-insane Florida novels I love, the plot is rarely the reason to read.
    • 4/5
      Rednecks and shootouts and swamprats, oh my! Razor sharp story about repo-man and ex-cop Nick Reid as he tries to track down his landlady's stolen "calypso coral" Ranchero in the Mississippi Delta. Over the top characters, vivid detail and raucous, wacky dialogue make this book a hilarious treat. It had me laughing out loud; many of the characters are really zany, campy and almost comic-bookish, if that makes sense. Fun, quick regional piece.
    • 4/5
      This book is fun to read. It travels all around Mississippi (mostly from Sonic to Sonic) and goes from a simple TV repo job to car theft to kidnapping to an all-out war with a meth dealer. And it does it with a sense of humor and is told by a narrator who knows how to turn a phrase. But it is not all that long on plot. There is a story here that you can follow from beginning to end. It’s not that it doesn’t have a discernible story line; it’s just that sometimes it felt like the story line was just a convenient way to introduce us to all the characters the author wanted us to meet. Are some of the characters slightly clichéd and lacking in depth? To some degree, yes. But are the characters interesting? I think so, yes. And well worth the time you invest in this book to meet them all. There’s a lot of action and the story moves quickly from one crazy situation to the next which sets a good pace and makes for a quick read. I think it is the kind of book that is best enjoyed if you don’t think too much about it. You shouldn’t worry about where it is all going, don’t try to discern great meaning or figure out some mystery. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book. A first novel set in the Missippi delta with a repo man surrounded by a great cast of characters as he tries to recover his landladies stolen vintage Ranchero. Action packed, funny and an altogether good read. I look forward to his next book.
    • 3/5
      Ranchero is the debut novel by Rick Gavin and it starts out interesting and then proceeds to demonstrate that is was probably a better out line then novel. The plot set in the Mississippi Delta centers around a stolen Ranchero. In pursuit of this Ranchero we are introduced to a number of Delta "characters". It's about half way through the novel that I realize that I don't care if they get the car back or not and these"characters" are terribly one dimensional. Another not terrible but not good either book
    • 3/5
      Caper duos are popular in fiction and this is the first of many, perhaps, by Rick Gavin. For light, fast reading, I have enjoyed the capers of Stephanie Plum and her sidekick, Lula (Janet Evanovich). Ranchero is part of that genre, skimming the underbelly of society in a profession that verges on lawlessness. At first, I was a put off by the grammar, "As him and the wife were wrangling..." and yet, two paragraphs later, Gavin writes that "...he burbled that way toddlers will and unfreighted himself of drool." What a descriptive turn of phrase! The story is fast-paced and conversational in its telling.
    • 4/5
      Sometimes when you read a first novel, you think it's pretty good, that the author has promise and you might read a second novel of his when it's published. When I read Ranchero by first time novelist Rick Gavin, I had one thought when I finished the last page - hope another one is coming soon, real soon, since Gavin has arrived as a fully developed author. Although he is being compared to Carl Hiaasen, I found I was often reminded of Hap and Leonard from the Joe Lansdale books....and that's a good thing. Gavin has carved out his own niche with Repo men Nick Reid and Desmond and I eagerly await their next adventure.
    • 4/5
      The repo business can be hazardous to your health! Just ask Nick Reid. He and his partner, Desmond, encounter many crazy characters along the way in a wild ride through the Delta in pursuit of a flat-screen TV and a 1969 Ranchero. The dialogue was good and I laughed out loud at times. I'd be interested to see if Gavin continues these characters in future adventures.
    • 5/5
      Former Deputy Nick Reid has decamped from the “eastern Virginia uplands” to the Mississippi Delta, where there are people “who’d help you out for no conceivable reason and people who’d extract your vital organs for sport” and where “antibiotics and midnight sutures” qualify as romance. Now he’s a repo man – mostly 40 inch televisions. His landlady’s dead husband’s fully restored 1969 Ford Ranchero, calypso coral in color, is stolen when a repo goes bad and Nick gets flattened with a fireplace shovel. After promising to get the car back he’s chasing down the type of people that drive around “with that baby of theirs on the dashboard to make room for his daddy’s bong.” Fortunately Nick has his giant partner Desmond, a Delta native who knows everyone and seems intent on eating at every Sonic in Mississippi. Eventually the trail leads to “a diabolical Acadian fuck stick” named Guy, a local meth lord with an evil reputation. As they track Guy, Nick and Desmond encounter some Delta characters and plenty of trouble, much of it “maddening to contemplate, really, much of it easily avoidable.”The writing is crisp, vivid and colorful, the characters lively, and Ranchero maintains a steady and highly entertaining pace to the end. I’ll be waiting for the next book in the series.
    • 3/5
      I didn`t enjoy Ranchero too much. It starts interesting but in the middle of the story it seems like it gets nowhere. The way he describes people in the south is kind of funny and also tasteless-like "swamp-trash". I don`t think it`s amusing when you try and drive with a car in the middle of the road to catch an armadillo, and I don`t think it`s necessary to describe how to chop of a living person’s arm and feed it to the crocodiles. And later other body parts. The kind of humor is sometimes funny but little weird for me. The storyline is confusing but in the end it comes back together.
    • 4/5
      This was a fun romp through the Mississippi delta with some memorable characters, not that I would want to meet them in a dark alley, or a lit one for that matter.I just loved that the posse kept growing. It could have used some tightening at some places, but for his first book ever, Ranchero is very good.
    • 3/5
      I received this book from the Early Reviewers program. I've always liked Carl Hiaasen's books, and this seemed to be what would happen if Hiaasen set one of his books in the Mississippi Delta instead of Florida. Nick is a working as a repo man, and after his landlady's car is stolen, he gathers an unlikely group of Delta residents to help him get it back. With drug lords, swamps, crooked policemen, and lots of trips to Sonic, this was a really fun book to read.
    • 3/5
      I received this as a early reviewer.IT was kind or funny,about a couple of repo guy chasing all around the delta chasing after a stolen Ranchero.They reminded me of the people on the show "Swamp People"
    • 4/5
      Gavin's bitingly funny wit and sarcasm saved this book for me. I started off very excited as I find this author to be along the same vein as Haissen but I got quickly discouraged with almost the forced wit and cliches - there was just too much effort being thrown at the reader. Like the author was taking every last great line they could come up with and throwing it into one book. I get that, obviously this is a first effort and the author wants it to succeed and puts everything and more into it. He could have pulled back a bit and I would have enjoyed it more.Having said all that - I still enjoyed the ride as I appreciate his style and humor. I am looking forward to more.
    • 3/5
      If you enjoy Carl Hiaasen and Elmore Leonard you will like Ranchero by Rick Gavin. Set in the Mississippi Delta a rich feel for the area is portrayed. How accurate, I couldn't say but for the intent of the fiction of the novel it worked well. It is intended to be a comedy and there were sections in which I laughed out loud. I enjoyed the protagonist and his sidekicks and the story moved well for the majority of the book.I would have given it more stars if the storyline had more depth and variety and the characters were a bit more fully developed.
    • 2/5
      Gavin's first novel is an episodic caper that we aren't intended to take seriously, with caricatures subbing for characters and stereotypes front and center. Our narrator has moved from Virginia to the Mississippi delta, works as a repo man, and thinks very little of all the people and places in his new home. He has borrowed the awesome title car of his landlady's late husband, and when a "client" steals the car rather then negotiating for leniency on his tv repossession, the action, such as it is, starts. It's sort of fun, sort of a waste of time.
    • 5/5
      This is a fantastic first book from author Rick Gavin. Mississippi white trash at its finest. a very funny adventure about how repo man Nick Reid loses and finally gets back his landlady's 1969 Ranchero automobile. If you like the Hap and Leonard series from Joe R Lansdale, The serge books by Tim Dorsey, or Carl Hiaasen, Bill Fitzhugh, or Ben Rehder, you will like this book.