There’s gold in them thar hills―or more precisely, in Arizona’s Chocolate Mountains, where one hundred years ago a miner stashed a king’s ransom of the stuff. But times have changed. The world has changed. And now the Chocolate Mountains are the home of the largest military artillery range in the world. Harry’s living on disability and getting liquored up and beaten down. Frank’s a feisty old-timer battling cancer and a domineering daughter. And Ricky’s a good kid in a bad spot, doing everything for family. Together they’re staking what little they have left on a dangerous quest to the Big Maria Mine―and the gold that can offer them a new beginning. Unfortunately a meth-dealing biker wants a piece, a trigger-happy AWOL soldier wants to play chicken in a live minefield, two stubborn burros want to go home, a starving mountain lion wants his dinner, and the US Army wants to rain on our heroes’ parade with real bombs. When you’re all out of crazy ideas, you’ve got to try the stupid ones. Blake Crouch reviews Johnny Shaw’s new crime humor novel Big Maria For me, there are several variations on the "amazing reading experience." When you can't put a book down due to perfect plotting. - When you find yourself caring deeply about its characters. - When those characters are people who in real life you would shudder to have as neighbors and yet you still care. - And this is truly the rarest of all and nothing short of an absolute gift. When every few pages you stumble across a one-liner that makes you smile, laugh, shake your head, and wonder just how long this writer can sustain this lovely train of thought. Such is the wonder of Big Maria , the second novel, following Dove Season , by Johnny Shaw, which somehow manages to achieve all of the above and more... Read the rest of this review at www.kindlepost.com . Starred Review Shaw is back with another crazy “buddy picture” of a caper novel (following Dove Season , 2011), this one featuring three engaging losers who band together for a Treasure of the Sierre Madre –like search for an abandoned gold mine. Fortunately, our gang of bumblers is a bit less greedy than Fred C. Dobbs and associates, but the job they’ve set for themselves is a lot more demanding: first, they must find the treasure map buried under a house that is itself residing at the bottom of a lake; then it’s a simple matter of trespassing on federal land being used as a test-bombing site and climbing a mountain while dodging artillery and skipping through a minefield. It doesn’t help that our heroes are, respectively, a drunk named Schmidttberger (guess what his nickname is) with a broken leg; another drunk, this one a foolish optimist with an atrophied arm; and a senior citizen suffering from cancer and a heart condition. The comedy is low but hilarious and often tinged with violence (“Everything got a lot more confusing after the burro exploded”), but the emotion is real and often heartrending. Shaw somehow manages to drag you into his mix of absurdity, mayhem, and pathos against all your better instincts. You really shouldn’t be liking this book so much, you tell yourself before peeling off another 50 pages to see what explodes next and whether our guys get home safely. Comic thrillerdom has a new star. — Bill Ott “Johnny Shaw has an incredible talent for moving from darkness to hope, from heart-wrenching to humor, and from profane to sacred. His latest, Big Maria , is an adventure story that’s equal parts Humphrey Bogart and Elmore Leonard, with just a little bit of the Hardy Boys thrown in. I loved every page.” ―Hilary Davidson author of The Next One to Fall “I loved every page of Big Maria . You don’t often read a gutbustingly funny book that manages to maintain its fundamental seriousness and bad-ass sense of plot. This proves what many of us suspected after ‘Dove Season,’ that Johnny Shaw is one of the majors already.” ―Scott Phillips author of The Ice Harvest and The Adjustment “…Imagine the following: pretend the late Donald Westlake sketched out his wildest, craziest, funniest Dortmunder novel, and then instead of writing it himself, asked gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to actually write it. You would then have Big Maria , one of the funniest, wildest, comic-caper adventures we have stumbled across in a long time.” ― Suspense Magazine "Johnny Shaw has an incredible talent for moving from darkness to hope, from heart-wrenching to humor, and from profane to sacred. His latest, Big Maria , is an adventure story that’s equal parts Humphrey Bogart and Elmore Leonard, with just a little bit of the Hardy Boys thrown in. I loved every page." - Hilary Davidson author of The Next One to Fall "I loved every page of Big Maria . You don't often read a gutbustingly funny book that manages to maintain its fundamental seriousness and bad-ass sense of plot. This proves what many of us suspected after 'Dove Season,' that Johnny Shaw is one of the majors already." - Scott Phil