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', toughtalkin', 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.

'Thomson hooks you like a novice trout in a paddling pool... and he doesn't let go' - Times

'A hymn to West Texas and its plain talkin' redneck ways' - Time Out

'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

'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

'Definitely one for all the line dancers out there. Yeehaw!' - The List

'Affable and fun: Thompson's portrayal of an innocent gone (very) far abroad proves irresistibly readable' - Kirkus