McMurtry's down-home fictions have always been juiced up with side-orders of raunchy charm and beer-barrel comedy—but this time [in Cadillac Jack] he tries, with middling results, to make an entire novel out of such enticing (yet ultimately wearying) trimmings. Narrator-hero "Cadillac Jack" McGriff is a onetime rodeo bulldogger who now travels the country, in his pearly Cadillac, as a super-duper dealer/scout—picking up antiques and other collectibles (e.g., a load of gem-encrusted cowboy boots), buying at garage sales, selling to the super-rich…. McMurtry does a dandy job with Jack's business doings here: his highway world of garage-sale finds, auction fever, and obsessive acquisition is captured in rich, economic detail. And the quieter comedy … often scores. But the supposed center of this novel, Jack's romantic quandary, is uninvolving throughout, thanks to the thin characterizations—while the broader [Washington] D.C. farce clashes badly with the tough-guy sentimentality. An idle mix of charm, noise, and hoke, then: far too long …, fitfully endearing, and especially disappointing after the textured comedy/drama control of Somebody's Darling.
A review of "Cadillac Jack," in Kirkus Reviews (copyright © 1982 The Kirkus Service, Inc.), Vol. L, No. 15, August 1, 1982, p. 894.
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