My buddy Ted “Train” O’Brien once told me that once your book is published, it ceases being yours. The reader takes it over and fills in your words with their imagination.
But sometimes you get a reader who sees your world exactly as you drew it. Below is one of the first reviews out on The Ranger. Scott Montgomery runs the crime/thriller section for one of the largest bookstores in the country — BookPeople in Austin, Texas. I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a review more. Scott definitely got what The Ranger was all about.
THE RANGER by Ace Atkins
Scott Montgomery
As someone who has dealt with writer Ace Atkins, I could tell this book is a mix of his many loves and influences. Blues and country & western music, Drive-in action movies for the southern set, classic crime novels, southern literature, and westerns all leave a footprint or several on the pages. Ace’s original voice and enthusiasm pull it all together into something fresh and original
Army Ranger Quinn Colson home from a tour in Afghanistan to bury his uncle, the sheriff of Tibbehah County that’s overrun with meth and crime. Lillie Virgil, the cute deputy he grew up with, says it was murder. When Johnny Stagg, the town boss, tries to take his uncle’s land from him, Quinn grabs his badass one-armed buddy and set out to run the bad guys out of town.
Like Dashiell Hammett, Atkins melds pulp with politics and current events seamlessly without ham-fisted preaching. He uses the genre to look at a small town America that has been gutted by poverty and drugs, populated by men used and jaded from rich men’s wars. His fictional small town corruption mirrors the bigger real life social corruption, all while delivering more fun dialogue, fights, and speeding cars. The Ranger fires on all cylinders like a Trans-Am in a Burt Reynolds movie. I can’t wait to do more laps around the track with Quinn Colson behind the wheel.