Something Like Justice, With a Baritone Hum

Ranchero [by] Rick Gavin

New York; Minotaur [2011]

978-1-250-00658-5; $14.99

This book is billed as “a crime novel,” but it’s certainly one with a difference.  It’s really more of a slice-of-life around a crime.  Yes, a crime has been committed, but the question is not a whodunit, but more like a “will justice be served” kind of thing. It is a testosterone-filled road trip-type of romp, involving a number of good ol’ boys from the Mississippi Delta.

Nick Reid, former-cop-turned-repo-man, is trying to put the bite on Percy Dwayne Dubois [that’s Dew-boys] for the 42-inch flat-screen TV he’s missed 3 payments on.  But Percy Dwayne cold cocks him with a fireplace shovel and helps himself to Nick’s wallet, cell phone, and the 1969 Calypso Coral Ford Ranchero he’s driving.  Now the car rightfully belongs to Pearl Jarvis, Nick’s landlady, whose husband Gil drove it with great pride and joy until he croaked. Nick’s borrowed it since his wheels were in the shop.  Now he fervently promises to bring it back to Pearl in mint condition.

He enlists the help of his hulking African-American colleague, Desmond, who is driving his ex-wife’s Geo Metro.  They slip by their enraged Lebanese boss K-Lo and head off with a sort-of-plan:  to head to Yazoo City, where Luther Dubois – perhaps a relative of Percy Dwayne’s – reputedly lives.    Meanwhile, Percy Dwayne calls Nick, using his own cell phone, and offers to ransom the Ranchero.  This proves fruitless, since a violent meth cooker named Guy meets up with Percy Dwayne, and takes the Ranchero, along with Percy Dwayne’s wife Sissy and their son, the diapered PD, Jr.

The whole thing reads like the plot of a ‘70’s Southern exploitation flick starring a young Burt Reynolds. Most of the characters are an iffy bunch, but, generally, their hearts are in the right place.  Aficionados of Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard, who don’t mind a little b.o. and sleaze and potty humor, will enjoy this, for Gavin, like them, grounds his story in his colorful, weird, yet believable characters, their ways of thinking and speaking, and a comparison of Sonics from town to town.  It’s a trip through the backwoods South , combusting its way towards something like justice, to the music of that “glorious baritone hum” on a stolen 1969 Calypso Coral Ford Ranchero. Recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.