Books : Crime, Thrillers & Mystery : Authors, A-Z : E : Evanovich, Janet

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Fearless Fourteen

Janet Evanovich
Plum Lovin'

Janet Evanovich
One for the Money

Janet Evanovich
Twelve Sharp

Janet Evanovich
Three to Get Deadly

Janet Evanovich
Hot Six

Janet Evanovich
Four to Score

Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum, the trash-talking New Jersey bail bondswoman of this popular series, is tracking Maxine Nowicki who's wanted for skipping out on a car-theft charge lodged by her ex-boyfriend. Now the ex-boyfriend's very interested in getting back the love letters he supposedly wrote to Maxine. But what he's really looking for is the secret on which Evanovich hangs her screwball cast of colourful minor characters, including Sally Sweet, a cross-dressing drag queen; Lula, the 250-pound ex-hooker who works for Steph's boss; Cousin Vinnie, the bail bondsman; Grandma Mazur, who packs a Glock and is always looking for a little action; and Joyce, a wannabe bounty hunter who's been cramping Steph's style since she played pass the salami with Steph's ex-husband. The action doesn't get much farther from Trenton than the Jersey Shore, but when Steph's apartment and car are blown up by the others on Maxine's trail and she moves in with Joe Morelli, the handsome, arrogant cop she's been hung up on since high school, it gets hotter than the craps table in Atlantic City. Plum's fans won't be disappointed in this fourth outing in the series, and they're likely to be even more interested in the snappy patter and sexy shenanigans than in the mystery that holds it all together. --Jane Adams
High Five

Janet Evanovich

"Uncle Fred was someone I saw at weddings and funerals and once in a while at Giovichinni's Meat Market, ordering a quarter pound of olive loaf. Eddie Such, the butcher, would have the olive loaf on the scale and Uncle Fred would say: 'You've got the olive loaf on a piece of waxed paper. How much does that piece of waxed paper weigh? You're not gonna charge me for that waxed paper, are you? I want some money off for the waxed paper.' "
The speaker is Stephanie Plum, the glamorous if slightly ditzy bounty hunter from Trenton, New Jersey, and one of the most original creations in recent mystery fiction.
In this fifth entry in Janet Evanovich's increasingly popular series, Stephanie's problems are many and varied. She's not making enough moneypicking up FTAs (Failures to Appear) for her cousin Vinnie, of Vincent PlumBail Bonds; her red-hot love affair with Detective Joe Morelli has cooled off; and her giant extended family is no help at all. For instance, Uncle Fred the cheapskate has disappeared, leaving behind some suspicious photographs of body parts in garbage bags and links to some really dangerous people.
When Stephanie turns to her friend and mentor, Ranger, for financial advice, he gets her involved in a gang of toughs doing instant evictions for landlords. (She complains to Ranger about the job and its dangers, prompting one of the hired thug to say, "Man, you don't like to get shot. You don't like to get arrested. You don't know how to have fun at all.")
Most of Stephanie's charm, of course, comes from her attitude--a combination of the brazen bravado that turns a failed lingerie model into bounty hunter in the first place and the normal fears of a person in over her head.
Other Plums in paperback, by the numbers: One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, and Four to Score. --Dick Adler
Two for the Dough

Janet Evanovich
Plum Boxed Set 4 (10, 11, 12): Contains Ten Big Ones, Eleven on Top, and Twelve Sharp (Stephanie Plum Novels)

Janet Evanovich
Plum Lucky (Stephanie Plum Novels)

Janet Evanovich
To the Nines

Janet Evanovich
Seven Up

Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum, Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter star of Seven Up, is good at her job partly because of her infinite resourcefulness and partly because her world is one in which everyone on all sides of the law knows at least one member of her extended family. In this, the seventh offering in the Stephanie Plum series, she is chasing an elderly mobster who used to go out with her grandmother. Eddie DeChooch, though, is no less formidable for being old and he constantly eludes Stephanie, the police who want to question him about the corpse Stephanie found in his garage and Joyce, her arch-rival in the bail bond enforcement business. Stephanie's crowded social life gets ever more intense with her family pressing her to name a date for her wedding to Joe, her unreliable cop fiancé, her drastically attractive colleague Ranger, asking her for a night of bliss, her horribly perfect sister Valerie back from California with a down on men and the idiot stoners Moonman and Doug wandering around in super-hero costumes. Evanovich constantly ups the comic ante; DeChooch and his sidekicks manage to be menacingly obnoxious while remaining credibly characters in a farce. The social observation of families is as acute as ever while never passing up the chance for snappy one-liners. Above all, Stephanie herself remains a delightful tone of voice--a heroine considerably braver than she ever lets herself notice and rather smarter an investigator than she or anyone else gives her credit for being. --Roz Kaveney
Hard Eight

Janet Evanovich
Lean Mean Thirteen (Stephanie Plum Novels)

Janet Evanovich
Plum Boxed Set 3 (7, 8, 9): Contains Seven Up, Hard Eight and to the Nines (Stephanie Plum Novels)

Janet Evanovich
Hard Eight

Janet Evanovich

In Hard Eight, Stephanie Plum picks up a case a little nastier than anything the wisecracking bounty hunter's seen before. Evelyn Soder and her young daughter have gone on the run, leaving an angry ex-husband who's planning to collect on a child custody bond that will leave Evelyn's grandmother homeless. Stephanie's first clue that there's more to it than that comes in the form of Eddie Abruzzi: a shady local businessman who warns her to butt out of the case. Stephanie doesn't scare easily, but when Abruzzi's henchmen leave a bag of snakes on her doorknob and tarantulas in her car, she has no choice but to call Ranger, the hunky man of mystery to whom she already owes too many favours. Steph knows that Ranger will soon be calling in his debts, but with her ex-fiancé Joe Morelli out of the picture, that should be OK--shouldn't it?
In the meantime, she's got other fugitives to catch, aided by the usual band of misfits, plus a bumbling correspondence-school lawyer who's developed the hots for Stephanie's sister, Valerie. And Steph's in for a surprise from her mother, who proves she's not above wielding a dangerous weapon to save her daughter's life. Author Janet Evanovich has made a bold move in using a soupçon of child jeopardy to pull this series out of the comfortable but formulaic pattern it was threatening to fall into. It's still funny, and yes, some cars are destroyed, but now there's a real edge of darkness under the humour. Fans needn't fear, though: Jersey girl Stephanie is still full of sass and Tastykakes. --Barrie Trinkle, Amazon.com
To the Nines

Janet Evanovich
Ten Big Ones

Janet Evanovich

The latest of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum adventures, Ten Big Ones places New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie in rather more jeopardy than usual. She has inconvenienced a local street gang and finds herself with a price on her head; the contract killer known as the Junkman has a taste for torture as well as murder, and she is the last victim on his list. As usual, she finds herself caught between her regular boyfriend, cop Morelli, and the dangerous and charming Ranger; as usual, the main plot goes on in the intervals between her regular rounds of catching up with bail defaulters and delivering them to court, and her involvement with her eccentric Hungarian and Italian relatives.
There are few surprises here--Janet Evanovich is good and funny on the subtle variations in New Jersey's suburbs and the differences between good and bad neighbourhoods, and she has always had the knack of constructing knockabout scenes of slapstick and farce. If at times she drifts towards the formulaic and stale, this is only really evident in retrospect. As one reads the book, she is as entertaining as always. --Roz Kaveney
Ten Big Ones (Stephanie Plum Novels)

Janet Evanovich

The latest of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum adventures, Ten Big Ones places New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie in rather more jeopardy than usual. She has inconvenienced a local street gang and finds herself with a price on her head; the contract killer known as the Junkman has a taste for torture as well as murder, and she is the last victim on his list. As usual, she finds herself caught between her regular boyfriend, cop Morelli, and the dangerous and charming Ranger; as usual, the main plot goes on in the intervals between her regular rounds of catching up with bail defaulters and delivering them to court, and her involvement with her eccentric Hungarian and Italian relatives.
There are few surprises here--Janet Evanovich is good and funny on the subtle variations in New Jersey's suburbs and the differences between good and bad neighbourhoods, and she has always had the knack of constructing knockabout scenes of slapstick and farce. If at times she drifts towards the formulaic and stale, this is only really evident in retrospect. As one reads the book, she is as entertaining as always. --Roz Kaveney