Toby Sawyer was having a bad night. A part-time deputy hoping to make full time, he'd been left to guard the corpse of Luke Jordan, shot nine times by a jealous Mexican. He only sneaked off for a quickie with his girl friend to get back and find the body gfone.The police chief couldn't be found. A car was following him around town as he looked for help. Three Mexicans catch and beat him, taking keys from his pocket. The police station is suddenly empty and locked up.At the fire station, he runs

Victor Gischler has never let me down, so I pulled up THE DEPUTY to ring in the new year. Gotta tell you, I think this is my favorite Gischler so far. The novel takes place over the course of one long, blood-soaked night as our young hero—a part-time deputy sheriff with no experience and no skills to speak of—must stay one step ahead of a wily group of professional killers. There’s lots of balls-out action in this one, great characters, and dead-on pacing.

It’s weird what can screw up your suspension of disbelief. For example, I cheerfully watched three Indiana Jones movies where things like Nazis getting their faces melted off by religious artifacts or one guy killing half the populations of India and Germany didn’t phase me at all, but when Harrison Ford survived a nuclear blast by climbing into a refrigerator, I rolled my eyes and mentally checked out for the rest of the movie. While The Deputy is a fast and fun action thrill ride in a lot of w...

This book needs to be a movie already. This is a first person story of a young guy who has a part time job as a deputy in BFE Oklahoma. He's got a wife and a kid and no future. A crime wave strikes his quiet little town and while he is three blocks down the street getting it on with a high school girl the body he was supposed to be guarding disappears. The night just gets worse from there. He gets hit, kicked, scratched, firebombed, shot at, rolls his car...and that's before he finds out. You ex...

Part-time deputy Toby Sawyer is called to the scene of a shooting by the Chief. Designated to be responsible for keeping an eye on the Luke Jordan’s body until the ME arrives, he gets tired of waiting and decides to hop down the street in this backwater Oklahoma town and visit Molly, his extra-marital girlfriend for a quick poke. Problem is when he gets back the body is gone.Told in the first person, Gischler does a great job of keeping the reader as clueless of events as is Toby. He also wonder...

What about the money?A fun little story. Nothing seemed to go right for the poor young deputy. A long 24 hours for him. Just wondering if he kept some of that stash at the end.

Part-time sheriff's Deputy Toby Sawyer gives new meaning to the word "hapless." He's given the simple task of keeping his eye on the body of a local tough who turns up murdered. Somehow, he manages to botch even that. His efforts to set his mistake right send him lurching from one life-threatening situation to another, uncovering more and more secrets and corruption with every lurch. Let's face it, Jack Reacher this guy ain't. But Victor Gischler keeps the action moving so fast, and makes the ba...

What caught my eye (since these days I read very little non-fiction, I'm obsessed with self-improvement) was that the print inside the book. Chapters looked short and it sounded like a great book. When I started reading, I couldn't stop. I read the book in two days, picking it up whenever I could. What a great read! Anyone that likes fast paced police novels needs to pick this book up. The sales rank on amazon is low which means that its not sold nearly as often as it should be for how great of

I have only one bad thing to say about Gischler, and that's that the bulk of his books are one-sitting reads. You dive head first into the characters and circumstances he's created, are dragged by the nose through all the action, and then dumped out on the last page breathless and wondering a bit as to what exactly just happened. This one is no different. Toby is a quintessential slacker-made-good as he stumbles his way through the most unlikely night of his life.

Great! Gischler is the man. Noir at its finest.

All part-time deputy Toby Sawyer had to do was keep an eye on Luke Jordan's body. Now the corpse has vanished and people are coming out of the woodwork to put a bullet in Toby's head. Can Toby survive the night with his job and his life intact?When I got my metric ton of free books at Bouchercon, Kemper mentioned that Victor Gischler was a good writer seconds before he went into his tantrum over the free John Sandford I scored. I have to say that that was one of many occasions when that curmudge...

What’s that, you say you like action stories? What? You say action stories are a dime a dozen and no one really knows how to slap down the type of story you’re looking for: a page-turner with lots of guns, bullets, sex and violence? Well, look no further than Victor Gischler’s The Deputy. Mr. Gischler does the wrong-man plot to perfection and he outshines himself in The Deputy.In brief: Sad sack Toby Smith is a deputy sheriff in remote Coyote Falls, Oklahoma. A deputy by circumstance rather than...

This was quick and pleasant. Not the deepest read, but at the same time it doesn't bother with any of the pitfalls it would've if it tried to be deep. Nice, apt portrait of small towns with some bulldozer, bloodthirsty action. The events are happening over one single night which is very cool. I'd call that a summer read or a beach read, whatever is your name for it. It does a limited number of things as a novel, but what it does, it does very good.

The Deputy by Victor Gischler is a fun and wacky (in a good kind of way) adventure of a book. It's probably not going to be noticed by a lot of people or to the media but if you're looking for a quick read that is easy to follow along and won't scramble your brains trying to look for an answer, then definitely give The Deputy a try. These are the kind of books that although you'll definitely find flaws in them, you really won't mind them too much because it's not something you'll take seriously....

Crime ThrillerNoir crime author Victor Gischler delivers again with a roller coaster thrill ride of a crime story with a high body count.Toby Sawyer is basically a slacker, a young, part timer at the Sheriff's Dept. in Coyote Crossing, Oklahoma. With little money, a wife, a baby and a trailer, Toby hopes to someday be hired on a full-time basis. The Sheriff's Dept. in the dusty, desolate area usually deals with barking dogs or the occasional drunk at the local bar.Local badboy Luke Jordan is fou...

Imagine if Forrest Gump had a long lost twin who grew up on the other side of the tracks.Now imagine that for some reason, he'd become a deputy and was asked to babysit the body of a bad apple who was most probably mixed-up with corrupted people of all kind.And now imagine that hot Oklahoma night filled with the same level of action as a Lars and Shane novel.That one was one sweet hell of a ride. It's too bad that Victor Gischler seems to stick to fantasy now...

I had picked this book up at a sale, as the back seemed interesting. I have a soft spot for weird noir. The book should have a subtitle of "Worst Night of Toby's Short Life". All but the epilogue takes place in the span of a few hours. Its like if Jack Reacher arrived in town and instead of super detective dude, you get this punk kid who desperately wants to be full time cop, mainly to pay for the diapers.It is filled with sad characters, ones that are very flawed. It felt like the author was ch...

This is a fun book that moves along at a fast enough pace to make it a one day read. Part time deputy Toby is asked to guard a dead body that was found in the parking lot of the local honky tonk In small town Oklahoma. Of course even in small town America there are distractions for a young part time deputy. When the body turns up missing things will really heat up. The whole book covers one long night for this poor sap and is quite entertaining with plenty of action and some humorous parts as we...

Good noirThe Deputy is a good action packed noir set in a little small town in Arkansas. This was the first book by Gischler I've read and it was a fast paced suspenseful ride. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And if you like well written small town crime fiction you will too.

Three plus stars. Very fast read, all the action, and there's plenty of it, takes place in one night. A pretty late night at that as Toby Sawyer is called to watch over a dead body at the crime scene. Toby is a part time deputy, full time screw up with slacker and jerk rounding out the picture. He wants to make that full time deputy if the municipal budget allows so he grabs his badge, pins it to his Weezer t-shirt, is troubled by the fact that in his haste to get there he hadn't considered that...