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    Imperial Valley
    Imperial Valley
    Imperial Valley
    Audiobook9 hours

    Imperial Valley

    Written by Johnny Shaw

    Narrated by Scott Merriman

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Jimmy Veeder has finally settled down, completing his dramatic transformation from hell-raiser to family man. With his new wife, Angie, and eight-year-old son, Juan, he lives the quiet life. No trouble, no problems.

    Or so he thought. But this is Jimmy Veeder's Fiasco, after all.

    The night after his wedding, Jimmy is lured right back into a world of danger and mayhem when childhood friend Tomás Morales, the current crime lord of Mexicali, turns up on his doorstep offering information about the whereabouts of his son's grandfather, for whom Jimmy has been searching for years.

    Jimmy and Angie head to Mexico—one part honeymoon, one part expedition to find Juan's grandfather—accompanied by old pals Bobby Maves and Griselda.

    The trip immediately careens into chaos when they find themselves shadowed by thugs, shot at by cartel soldiers, and forced into a confrontation with a violent, volatile drug lord. The fight spreads from Sinaloa back to Jimmy's doorstep, putting everything Jimmy cares about directly in the crosshairs.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMar 7, 2017
    ISBN9781531890902
    Imperial Valley
    Author

    Johnny Shaw

    Johnny Shaw is the author of the award-winning Jimmy Veeder Fiasco series, including the books Dove Season, Plaster City, and Imperial Valley, as well as the stand-alone novels Floodgate and Big Maria. He has won the Spotted Owl and Anthony Awards and was the Grand Marshal of the 69th Annual Carrot Festival Parade. Johnny lives nomadically.

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    Reviews for Imperial Valley

    4/5

    16 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 1/5
      Poorly written and the lack of emotion from the reader made this one painful. What really killed it was the witticisms at inappropriate times.
    • 3/5
      I once spent a summer working in California’s Imperial Valley. It’s a place where on the radio you could hear that El Centro’s city planners had decided a $50,000 city beautification grant would be used to build a parking lot. I assumed that was a joke but like to tell it as solemn truth because, hey, some of those lots needed attention.For a literary re-visit I vacillated between William Vollman’s Imperial and Johnny Shaw’s Imperial Valley. I chose Shaw, seduced by the subtitle “A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco.” In the novel, Jimmy backs that selection by calling Vollman’s husky volume a “1,300-page masturbpiece.” His critique is delivered just after an SUV crashes into his home, and his pal, Bobby, jams the massive masturbpiece against the vehicle’s accelerator in order to propel the vehicle out ass backwards. Literature does have its uses.Not everything happening seems believable and the Veeder crew’s endless slinging of BS can become silly. However, it is fast-paced and readers are treated to menacing figures and ferocious fighting. This is, after all, a Mexican cartel tale. We are in Mazatlán and elsewhere in Sinaloa for most of the first half or so even though Veeder and friends aren’t in the narcotics game. They’d gone to Mexico on what was a sincere family mission. Turns out some places aren’t meant for sincere quests and some family is not meant to be met. Complications arise and repercussions follow Veeder back to the Imperial Valley to invade his family’s tranquility, such as it had been (when Bobby’s about, tranquility is never secure).Moral issues accompany the mayhem: Can it be wrong to not kill a man in cold blood, and to what extent is mercy correct or just foolishness? These aren’t given a lengthy treatment. Shaw’s aim is much more entertainment than philosophy. The climactic battle absolutely is built for Hollywood excess, as is the banter. Still, Shaw makes the questions explicit and readers will find opportunity to weigh how to answer, even if here the decision proves no surprise. But, as Veeder notes, “Some of our choices need to haunt us.”On balance, Imperial Valley is a comedy-supported action blitz (with saturation F-bombing) that also has some genuine emotion relating to family and trust. I’m adding Shaw’s first two “Veeder Fiascos” (Dove Season and Plaster City) to my “breezy reading” list.