Plaster City

Plaster City by Johnny Shaw
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Jimmy Veeder is living the straight life with Angie and Juan, apart from the occasional Mavescapade, when Bobby's sixteen year old daughter goes missing. Together, Jimmy and Bobby navigate a cesspool of gang members and underground girl fights. But is Julie still alive? Or does she even want saving?

Plaster City was part of the Kindle First program in April. And it is spectacular! There aren't many sequels that don't diminish the original but I'd say Plaster City is even better than Dove Season, the first Jimmy Veeder fiasco.

Plaster City sees Jimmy and Bobby go on another of their alcohol and testosterone fueld adventures, this time looking for Bobby's sixteen year old daughter, a girl he barely knows. There's plenty of action, humor, and general mayhem, much like the first book. Buck Buck and Snout come back, as do Gris, Angie, and both the elder Morales and his criminal grandson Tomas. In addition to that, we get to meet Bobby's ex Becky and his father. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree there.

Even more than in Dove Season, I can't help but notice the resemblance of Shaw's tales to those of Joe Lansdale, both in humor and violence. The interplay between Jimmy and Bobby had me chuckling out loud quite a few times. I can't emphasize enough how funny these Jimmy Veeder books are. Hilarious but never degenerating into outright nonsense.

As in the first book, the dynamic duo took a world class ass kicking, especially Bobby. The ending surprised me a bit since there was a character I suspected was introduced to do some kind of heroic sacrifice but I'm glad Shaw went his way with it.

If you're looking for action, laughs, and outright enjoyment, you'll be hard pressed to find another book this awesome. Five out of five stars. It's a contender for the best book I've read in 2014 so far.

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