Now or Never: Thirty-One on the Run

I've missed several installments in  Janet Evanovich's "Stephanie Plum" series but picked this up at the library for a little light reading. Entertaining as always and a few changes from the normal formula. Her car doesn't get blown up for a change and she has finally decided to learn how to use her gun and to buy some bullets for it; she shoots someone for the first time ever in the series. Stephanie has accepted two marriage proposals--from both Ranger and Morelli. What was she thinking?! Not only that, but she "celebrated" the engagements with each beau and now she thinks she might be pregnant. She'll keep you guessing until the end. This time, her FTA's include a mob boss and a man who thinks he is a vampire and appears to to have serially murdered several women. He is after Stephanie who is, apparently, still recovering from someone fire bombing her apartment. She has also picked up another admirer, an old school mate who now continually does nice things for her and ignores Stephanie's assertions that she is engaged so would he please desist. Lula is her usual sassy and over-the-top --literally--self, as is Grandma Mazur; characters are well developed and the plotting is fast-paced. An easy read for a tired mind. 

Going Rogue: Rise and Shine Twenty-Nine

Janet Evanovich just keeps churning out new installments in the "Stephanie Plum" series. The plots are fairly predictable and the characters have become familiar to her regular readers--I think I have read every one. Still, they are an amusing light read. Stephanie and Lula are concerned when they come to the bail bonds office one Monday morning to find neither Connie nor her regular box of donuts are there. It turns out she has been kidnapped and Stephanie is determined to rescue Connie without anyone else learning that she's been kidnapped. Of course, Lula is along for the ride. When the kidnappers call and demand a coin that was provided as bail for a recently murdered man, things go from bad to worse, because the coin is nowhere to be found. A phone call to Vinnie, who is out of town is no help as he doesn't even remember taking the coin. Stephanie and Lula track down the coin's previous owner to get a description and then head off to a comic book convention to try and find a replacement. When that fails to satisfy the kidnappers, the threats to Connie's well-being escalate. Of course Ranger has to assist with some less than legal information gathering and with keeping Stephanie safe. This time around, more than a car gets destroyed. Publishers Weekly describes the book as "fast and fun," concluding "This fetchingly frivolous entry may not be Evanovich’s best, but it satisfies." Booklist is considerably more enthusiastic as they gush "Irreverent, raucous, bawdy, and always laugh-out-loud hilarious, this is Evanovich at her brilliant best."

Tricky Twenty-Two

Any of you who are Janet Evanovich fans will recognize the title as the latest in her "Stephanie Plum" series, featuring a not terribly competent bond enforcement agent who tracks down clients who have skipped on their bail. Set in New Jersey with lots of local color as well asnvery colorful characters, readers have come to know and love, including Grandma Mazur, who refuses to act her age, Lula, former 'ho and Stephanie's sidekick, and of course the hot and sexy men in her life, Ranger and Morelli.
At the start of the book, Morelli tells Stephanie that he needs a little time away from the relationship and she is hurt and confused, even more so when he says he is thinking of leaving the police department. She is trying to figure out what is going on with him. This time Stephanie is after a college kid who supposedly broke the dean's arm in a scuffle over fraternity pranks. But it turns out to be much more complicated to find him than she imagine for he has gone into hiding. Someone is keeping secrets in the basement of the fraternity house and they might be very deadly.
 As usual, Stephanie destroys cars, has to have Ranger bail her out of numerous confrontations with big bad FTA's, and goes to her parents' house for dinner when all else fails. Rex the hamster is still alive (the most long-lived hamster ever). Stephanie's mom gets a taste for chasing bad guys and likes it. Just the usual predictably zany antics strung together in a well-constructed "who done it" mystery. I think Lula gets some of the best lines this time around. 

Top Secret Twenty One

I know Janet Evanovich solicits titles from her readers for the Stephanie Plum number series, but I do not know if the titles come first --stimulating plot ideas--or she writes the book first and then picks the title that best matches the plot line. In any case, there are some new elements and some of the more familiar plot devices in this latest installment. Ranger and Stephanie are still dancing around each other, although Stephanie remains sexually faithful--in behavior if not in fantasy--to Joe Morelli. Another car gets destroyed, although not burned up--this time while Lula is sleeping in the front seat. One of Stephanie's old contacts, height-challenged Randy Briggs, is being targeted by his boss, Jimmy Poletti, one of Stephanie's FTA's. She plans to use Briggs as bait. Polletti and Randy are persons of interest because they are key players in a drugs and sex slaves ring operating between Mexico and New Jersey. Someone has sent a missile into Briggs' apartment, leaving him homeless and now he is camped out with Stephanie--a highly undesirable situation for all kinds of reasons. Meanwhile, someone is also targeting Ranger with intent to harm and with deadly nuclear materials, so now the FBI is involved. Worse yet, the material, designed to be placed into the ventilation system at Rangeman headquarters, may just be a trial run for a larger target. Stephanie gets enlisted to help Ranger smoke out the would-be assassin and, in the process, becomes #2 on the hit list.  Last but not least, Grandma Mazur is at war with Morelli's Grandma Bella. But wait, I forgot the pack of feral chihuahuas guarding another one of Stephanie's FTA's. Yikes! A bit more complex and a little less formulaic than recent entries in the series, and still lots of fun.

Notorious Nineteen

I do not know how I could have missed this installment in Janet Evanovich's "Stephanie Plum" number series; I have read every single other one, including Takedown Twenty. Predictable in so many ways, but also predictably entertaining. Evanovich likes to keep the "big question" of who Stephanie will finally end up with going and going--will it be her cop boyfriend, Morelli, or the equally handsome and somewhat darker Ranger. Someone from Ranger's old special forces unit has gone off the beaten path and is threatening both Ranger and his friend and former fellow soldier, Kinsey, who is supposed to be getting married. The threats are scarey and are not limited to just Ranger and Kinsey but extend to Kinsey's fiancee, and now to Stephanie, since she has agreed to be Ranger's "date" and 2nd set of eyes at the various pre/wedding festivities. In the meantime, Stephanie and Lula are trying to bring in a variety of perps who have missed their court dates. The biggest monetary prize would come from Geoffrey Cubbin,  a man who embezzled $5m from the local retirement home, Cranberry Manor, and who Vinnie put up a lot of bail money for. Stephanie is behind on her rent and needs to score, and she just can't figure out how a man could go missing from a hospital floor--unless someone or some ones from the hospital staff are in on the disappearance. Turns out, this is not the first patient to go "missing" from the hospital. Cars blow up, apprehension situations are frequently slapstick (think arresting someone while you are naked), and the heat between Stephanie and Morelli and between Stephanie and Ranger never seems to die down. All the rest of the usual cast are present and making a good accounting of themselves. Good plot line; great light reading.

Seventeen and Eighteen

I was a little put off by Janet Evanovich's Sizzling Sixteen, feeling it lacked some of the zany energy that her books usually have. But she seems to have regained her footing in Smokin' Seventeen and Explosive Eighteen. In Seventeen, Stephanie's mom is once again trying to set her up with a future mate since neither Morelli nor Ranger seem likely to make the commitment to marriage. While the burned out bail bonds office--temporarily replaced by Mooner's bus--is under construction, dead bodies start showing up in shallow graves on the construction site. The killer is apparently making this personal for Stephanie. Meanwhile, Morelli's grandmother puts the Vordo spell on Stephanie with wild results. Eighteen opens with Stephanie returning from a vacation in Hawaii one day ahead of both Ranger and Morelli--but no one is talking about what happened. Eventually we learn why she has a white tan line on her left hand ring finger, but it takes longer to find out why the photograph that mysteriously appeared in her purse on the flight back is bringing strangers out of the woodwork to threaten Stephanie if she doesn't return it. Except that she doesn't have it anymore. Cars and buses are destroyed, Lula takes a love potion by accident and falls in love with one of their more unsavory FTA's, and their investigations result in a lot of roosters being loosed on Trenton.

Sizzling Sixteen

Nothing unpredictable in the newest Stephanie Plum episode and it's apparently pissing off a lot of series readers. Grandma Mazer is a little more subdued than usual in this episode and even the Joe - Stephanie and Ranger - Stephanie dynamics are a little in the background. I also wish she would just pick one of them and get on with it, but it doesn't happen here. Of course Stephanie messes up cars and ends up in totally ridiculous situations trying to retrieve FTA's. But this time the focus is on rescuing her boss, Vinnie, who has been a colorful but relatively unimportant character heretofore. Vinnie has been kidnapped by people to whom he is deeply in debt and they are threatening to kill him if Connie, Lula and Stephanie don't come up with a million plus dollars. So they set out to rob the bad guys in order to pay off the bad guys and hopefully not get caught at it. They depend on buckets of fried chicken to lure away guard alligators and Connie's tried and true stink bombs. Just the usual stuff in Trenton, New Jersey. Ranger's got her back the entire time so we never have to really worry...just go along for the ride and have a good time.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Stephanie Plum is at it again in the latest of the numbered series from Janet Evanovich. As I read in an interview with the author, she just can't decide whether Stephanie should go marry Joe Morelli and have lots of kids or live dangerously with Ranger, and that indecision is evident in this episode. True to form, Stephanie destroys cars--more than usual--and ends up in truly ridiculous and humiliating situations, like being in a hot dog costume and then falling over and not being able to get up. This time Lula is also setting things on fire in her quest to win the big barbecue contest with Grandma Mazur as her assistant chef. And as usual, the book is just laugh-out-loud funny, even if totally predictable. As long as she keeps writing them, I'll keep reading them.