Ranchero — Rick Gavin

Repo man Nick Reid had a seemingly simple job to do: talk to Percy Dwayne Dubois -- pronounced "Dew-boys," front-loaded and hick specific -- about the payments he's behind on for a flat screen TV, or repossess it. But Percy Dwayne wouldn't give in. Nope, instead he saw fit to go all white-trash philosophical and decided that since the world was stacked against him anyway, he might as well fight it. 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 on a rowdy ride across the Mississippi Delta.

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.

An original and ballsy road-trip of a crime novel -- most of it in Desmond's ex-wife's Geo -- Ranchero is an unforgettable read and a fantastic series debut.