Posts Tagged ‘Stephanie Plum’
And All Along, I Thought 13 Was the Unlucky Number
There are some names you just simply don’t associate with the Martha Stewart lifestyle – you know: frilly curtains, tons of throw pillows, crocheted tea cozies, and potpourri. One such name is Stephanie Plum; big-haired gum-crackin’ tight-jeans-wearin’ slightly slutty bounty hunter from Trenton. That’s in Joisey. Heck, Steph can’t even spell “potpourri”… So how is it all of a sudden that Stephanie is looking just a little bit on the domesticated side? And, horror of horrors, so is Lula!? Small wonder that the street teams are all over the ‘net dumping on Janet Evanovich and her latest Plum novel, Fearless Fourteen.
It begins like any other Stephanie Plum adventure, though mis-adventure would, as usual, be more accurate. The intrepid duo of Steph and Lula head out to bring in one of several harmless bail skips to be rebonded. This time, it’s Loretta, distant cousin of Steph’s main squeeze (at least this installment) Morelli – not unusual, since most of Trenton’s “Burg” is distantly related to Morelli. When the single mom asks Steph to watch her adolescent son Mario, aka “Zook,” until she gets out of lockup, little does Steph know that a couple of hours of babysitting can expand into something much closer to motherhood than she and Rex the hamster have ever shared. Seems Loretta’s wild-eyed brother Dom just got out of prison after ten years for armed robbery – a robbery from which nine million dollars is still missing. Steph’s first clue that something weird (or weirder than usual, one supposes) is going on is the dead guy in Morelli’s basement.
Speaking of weird, it looks like retired ‘ho’ Lula will be redoing her two-sizes-too-small Spandex® wardrobe in white come June: she’s engaged to be married to Rangeman muscle Tank, though for some reason Tank doesn’t remember asking her… And Steph’s gotten herself mixed up with fading rock-star Brenda (one name, like Madonna or Cher), whose latest project is a reality show about female bounty hunters. If it’s strange and it’s going on in the Burg, you can bet Steph’s involved… or her Grandma Mazur is: in this case, Grandma (aka “Scorch,” ’cause she’s so hot) has gone Goth and become a potato gunner to protect Morelli’s house from treasure hunters.
It’s not all fun and games, octogenarian flashers, antisocial monkeys, and naked cowgirls notwithstanding. Someone’s sending Steph amputatued toes (complete with red toneail polish) in the mail and, with Zook’s mom missing, our heroine fears the worst. It’s full-speed ahead and damn the exploding dye packs as Steph, between unprecedented bouts of domesticity, must find the missing robbers – not to mention the missing nine million – to save the rest of Loretta’s toes. And maybe her head… Read the rest of this entry »
Lucky 13½ for Evanovich?
You’ve gotta hand it to the likes of Robert Parker and James Patterson, veritable writing machines whose output is so massive it has to be spread across several different series. Whether or not you think the authors are boiling the pot is your call (I haven’t read anything by either of them in several years, so what would I know?) On that same topic, though, representing the distaff side (at least in the world of mysteries) we find Janet Evanovich coming up hard on the inside rail. First, Jan retreaded her signature ditz, bounty-hunter Stephanie Plum, with a blonde dye job and a hankering for NASCAR hunks in the Barny Barnaby series. Then she started pouring it on with a string of Plum novellas. Small wonder that she can now afford to live in both New Hampshire and Florida (I’m betting Patterson has homes on six continents…)
Counting the inaugural Visions of Sugar Plums (a Christmas Plum pudding of a novella), Plum Lucky is the third in the “between the numbers series.” The first two featured a new, innumerate hunky hero; blond and buffed surfer-boy Diesel, who stepped in while Steph’s everyday lust interests Ranger and Morelli were out of town. Plum Lucky sticks to the pattern…
If Stephanie Plum had to pick one person she’d rather hadn’t found a bag of money than her Grandma Mazur, it would be a tough assignment. As luck would have it, that’s exactly who found about three-quarters of a million in a duffel bag one St. Patty’s Day. Grandma being part of the Depends, polyester, and 4:30 dinner buffet set; she immediately decamped for Atlantic City in an RV she bought with a chunk of her find. A single phone call to Mama Plum finds daughter guilted into retrieving her errant Granny from Sin City East.
Problem being that the money was stolen. From a mobster. Who’s chasing the thief, who’s chasing Grandma M, who’s convinced the money is “lucky,” even though she’s already lost a boatload of it in the slots. Good thing Diesel’s coming along on the hunt (unfortunately, so are Lula the erstwhile ho and Steph’s office manager, the voluptuous Connie). With a horse-whispering self-styled Polish leprechaun, a horse, a horny little person, and a thug with a toad complex in the chase, you know it’ll be vintage Plum. And it is, right down to the body count (two cars, no humans or horses).
Like any installment in the Plum catalog, Plum Lucky trades heavily on Stephanie’s jersey-girl persona. She’s a tad trashy, a gum-snapping almost-slut in a too-tight tee shirt that she modestly covers with a gray hoodie decorated by chocolate stains on the sleeve. She remains remarkably faithful to her two beaux in the presence of all that blonde testosterone, perhaps partially because she’s still not certain that Diesel is really a human – he certainly seems to have eldritch powers…
Figure Plum Lucky for exactly what it is, and that’s something that Steph herself would love: a quickie; a little snack between meals; something to wet the whistle while waiting for Lean Mean Fourteen to hit the shelves in a couple of months. It’ll be a quick fix for Plum addicts, enough to keep ‘em glued to their TastyCakes for the nonce. I do have to wonder why a novella that’s only about a third of a regular Plum book costs eighteen bucks… marketing, I guess.
More Plum…
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