Jimmy Veeder and Bobby Maves are back at it, two years after the events of Dove Season ―they’re not exactly the luckiest guys in the Imperial Valley, but, hey, they win more fights than they lose. Settled on his own farmland and living like a true family man after years of irresponsible fun, Jimmy’s got a straight life cut out for him. But he’s knocking years off that life thanks to fun-yet-dangerous Bobby’s booze-addled antics―especially now that Bobby is single, volatile as ever, and bored as hell. When Bobby’s teenage daughter goes missing, he and Jimmy take off on a misadventure that starts out as merely unfortunate and escalates to downright calamitous. Bobby won’t hesitate to kick a hornets’ nest to get the girl to safety, but when the rescue mission goes riotously sideways, the duo’s grit―and loyalty to each other―is put to the test. Life in the California desert is excruciatingly dull for Jimmy Veeder. His only excitement is the occasional drunken escapade choreographed by his best friend, Bobby Maves. All of their reckless and irresponsible fun comes to a screeching halt when Bobby gets word that his estranged teenage daughter, Julie, has gone missing. Confidently setting out to find her, Jimmy and Bobby quickly realize that there is more to this disappearance than teenage angst and rebellion. With an arsenal of guns, beer, and cigarettes, the two formulate a dubious plan to rescue a young lady who might not want to be found. Anthony Award winner Shaw’s ( Big Maria ) second installment in the award-winning “Jimmy Veeder Fiasco” series ( Dove Season ) hits the right note. Violent and ribald without being salacious, the novel maintains a tongue-in-cheek attitude that keeps the reader wholly entertained. The setting of California’s Imperial Valley is paramount, with its long expanse of nothingness and like the book says, “…when you’re walking in the desert, you’re walking on a graveyard.” VERDICT Readers who enjoy mysteries and suspense novels with plenty of action and humor will delight in this series. —Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI Jimmy Veeder is back home in the Imperial Valley, between San Diego and Yuma (“as far south and as far east as you could go in California”), tending his farm and enjoying his wife and sort-of adopted son. It’s a quiet life, except when Jimmy’s oldest friend, Bobby Mayes, drags him along on a “Mavescapade,” ongoing skirmishes in what Bobby calls “the War on Boredom.” This time, though, the Mavescapade takes on a darker hue as Bobby’s teenage daughter, whom he barely knows, has disappeared, and Bobby and Jimmy are on the trail. As with Dove Season (2011), the previous Jimmy Veeder “fiasco” (as Shaw subtitles each book in his series), muddle and mayhem reign, but even with the stakes high, the author manages to inject plenty of absurdist high jinks. Darkness dominates, however, in the set-piece finale at an abandoned factory in the desert ( Plaster City ), where a drug gang stages prize fights between teenager girls. Mixing comedy with the ugly side of human experience is never an easy trick, but Shaw is well on his way to becoming a master at this difficult craft. Rat-a-tat narrator Jimmy Veeder doesn't drink or party like he used to. But he still gets involved in the occasional bar fight like the one his old pal Bobby Maves helps extricate him from. Bobby's volatility is just the kind of energy Jimmy needs to steer clear of. Bobby's attitude switches abruptly from devil-may-care to frantic when his longtime girlfriend, Becky, tells him that his teenage daughter, Julie, has gone missing. Jimmy plays uneasy wingman as Bobby tears recklessly through multiple leads. Julie's only friend, according to Facebook, is Angel, an aspiring artist. Her sketches of him adorn her bedroom wall. He turns out to be a gentle soul. His thug brother, Gabe, however, is quite another matter—and he's Julie's real friend. Jimmy tries to keep the armed Bobby in check and provides a sounding board as Bobby realizes his daughter isn't the paragon he thought she was. A twisted trail through miscellaneous hustlers and dealers in Southern California and Northern Mexico leads them to an ominous collection of seemingly abandoned buildings, the Plaster City of the title, in the middle of the Yuha Desert, where it all comes down. Despite some tendency to ramble, Jimmy's second "fiasco" ( Dove Season , 2011) has plenty of grit and pace. “Johnny Shaw has a way of making the ugliest, roughest, most insane misadventures feel honest and hilarious. Underneath all that vomit and blood is real affection, even tenderness, for a world that Shaw obviously knows well. His writing is brutal and profane and absolutely beautiful.” ―SG Redling bestselling author of Flowertown and The Widow File “If you do not love Johnny Shaw’s new novel Plaster City , I will fight you.” ―Christa Faust, author of Money Shot and Choke Hold “Each one of Johnny Shaw’s books has left me a happy camper, with the conviction that the