Rick Gavin's Mississippi Delta is hilarious place

The Ruston, La., building industry may be taking a bit of a hit. If everything Rick Gavin writes is as good as his first book, his days of framing houses and hanging plasterboard soon could be over.

“Ranchero,” billed as a crime novel but much closer to a comedic romp, takes readers through the Mississippi Delta, introducing them to a variety of characters, including good guys, bad guys and wannabe bad guys.

Gavin's hero, Nick Reid, a former cop turned repo man, is on the trail of a big-screen TV. He is quickly beaten and tied up. His car, a beautifully restored, calypso coral-colored 1969 Ranchero, is stolen. Reid promised his landlady, who owns the half-car, half-truck, that he would take good care of it. That means he won't stop until he has recovered the vehicle.

The search for the Ranchero turns into a very colorful trip in an area noted for its music and poverty. It is also noted for its agriculture, with thousands of acres of cotton and soybeans providing not only crops but also most of the beauty in the flatland. Gavin's descriptions are wonderful, as when he contrasts the poverty-stricken towns to the lush farmland.

“We rolled in an instant out of food stamps and into agribusiness. There might have been chicken fingers and government cheese for the two-legged fauna, but the flora would get no end of what it needed to survive.”

Gavin turns out phrase after phrase of ear-pleasing insight into the Delta and those who live there, and dialogue that sounds just right.

This includes Reid's 350-pound best friend, Desmond, to a sweet landlady determined to “insist” on giving away a wide variety of things — from the Ranchero to her late husband's clothes — to everyone she comes across, to a family of crooks named Dubois, a name they couldn't be bothered to “Frenchify.” (Going by Dew-boys — “front-loaded and hick specific” — was good enough for them.)

And when Gavin waxes funny, he really is funny, with enough comedic situations to keep everyone laughing as Reid tries to recover the Ranchero.