When a Harvard-educated aspiring actor loses all of his cash during a bus-ride poker game, he finds himself stranded in Abilene, Texas, broke and desperate. Enter Merle Luskey, a hard-drinkin', tough-talkin', oil-drillin', woman-lovin' wild-catter who just happens to have a job opening. About to lose his oil rigs and his ranch to the bank, Merle has a proposition for his new friend: he needs a 'rat killer', someone smart enough to help him outwit the bank, the sheriff, and a rival drilling company in a frantic race to hit pay dirt before the foreclosure goes through.
In the end, good old Texan gumption wins out, but regardless, Chocolate Lizards is a helluva ride.
Cole Thompson was born in Abilene Texas. He grew up among oil riggers, then went to Stanford University on a golf scholarship. Chocolate Lizards is his first novel.
Title: Chocolate Lizards
Author: Thompson, Cole
ISBN: 9780857305268
Binding:
Publisher: Oldcastle Books Ltd
Publication Date: 2022-03-17
Number of Pages: 256
Weight: 0.2401 kg
Definitely one for all the line dancers out there. Yeehaw! - Thompson hooks you like a novice trout in a paddling pool...and he doesn't let go * The Times *
A hymn to West Texas and its plain talkin red neck ways * Time Out *
Driving through West Texas, you'd swear the pump-jacks grow right out of the ground. They are as much a part of the scenery as shinnery brush. Drillers and roughnecks live by their own set of rules-a breed apart. Cole Thompson has written a great book and I think he captured it all, even the insanity -- Waylon Jennings
Chocolate Lizards is an extravagant and very entertaining example of West Texas oil-field gothic. It's as if the Castle of Otranto had been moved to Abilene, Texas, and peopled with refugees from Monty Python -- Larry McMurtry