The Ranger was a quick, easy read. Not particularly enjoyable, but what's done is done. Our protagonist Quinn Colson comes back home to northern Mississippi after six years away as an Army Ranger to attend his uncle's funeral. As it always happens, there's some past issues stirred up (an old sweetheart who broke it off with him in a Dear John letter in boot camp, now married to the town doctor) as well as the mystery of his uncle's suicide (which, of course, was not a suicide at all).

It's a fine plot of small town gossip and the growing meth trade in Appalachia. I just ... didn't care about or even like ninety percent of the characters. I don't know if, deep down, I was judging them all for being exceptionally white trash. I grew up in a rural area, I know people who could have been Charley or Wesley or Caddy. I didn't like them much either. Points for realism.

What I did like about The Ranger was how even the third-person POV reflected the vernacular of the area.

You used to could drive past this place at midnight and know which girls had finally given in to their boyfriends or who was stepping out.

Informing the readers of the changes to the town, not through dialogue but just observation. It was a charming bit amongst the dip spitting, blackened teeth and unrelenting bad hygiene.