Overview
The new comic novel Larry McMurtry hails as: 'a delight, lively, freewheeling, surprising, vivid. And funny.'
When Rowdy Talbot loses his silver belt buckle-the prize for winning the Crockett County bullriding championship-to two Frenchwomen he met in a bar, he hops on a plane to the City of Light to get it back, only to tangle with disaffected French revolutionaries, a turquoise-peddling CIA operative, a middle-aged courtesan, and a plot to destroy an American fast-food franchise. As Rowdy discovers in the chaos, there's a whole other world beyond the back of a bull.
So how funny is Rowdy in Paris?
Editorials
Library Journal
What do you think would happen if an emotionally dysfunctional bull rider chased two French women back to Paris because they stole his championship belt buckle? Do you suppose anyone would believe his story? Do you suppose he'd get mixed up with supercilious Gallic economic snob terrorists or be recruited by an unlikely CIA cab driver with an obsession for turquoise? You think he might wind up in a brothel or be defenestrated at least once? Do you think he might conquer some of his own phobias and help save France for good old American capitalism? Take a cowboy's tour of the City of Light with Rowdy Talbot and find out. You just might learn some self-evident truths such as "Never make assumptions about foreign women." You might split your gut laughing, too. Sandlin has written seven other novels, including Jimi Hendrex Turns Eighty), and if there's one thing you can expect from a Sandlin novel, it's a homely observation on every page, and some of those are bound to make you grin till your cheeks hurt. Highly recommended for all fiction collections where cowboy humor is appreciated. [See Prepub Alert, LJ9/1/07.]
—Ken St. Andre