Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight

 There's not much to say about Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight. Stephanie Plum was never deep and Janet Evanovich has been churning out amusing but surface mysteries for the past decade plus. This time, Steph is joined by Diesel, the semi-supernatural hunter who (literally) popped into the holiday themed between-the-numbers books. They're both hunting for a hacker named Oswald Wednesday who, in turn, is killing off the Baked Potatoes, a local (mostly white-hat) hacker group. Take a scene of Grandma Mazur at a funeral. Add in Lula having hairdresser problems after encountering a bat, an appearance by Uncle Sandor's baby-blue Buick, Baked Potatoes in protective custody at Rangeman, and Stephanie's mother discoverer the zen of knitting. Tie the threads together with an action rescue, and you've got a middling Plum. Entertaining enough to make me eager for the next installment but not particularly memorable.

Fortune and Glory: Tantalizing Twenty-Seven

 When I read a Stephanie Plum novel, I know what I'm getting. Janet Evanovich will string together funerals, family dinners, car death, Steph's attempts to capture someone who skipped bail on a petty and/or weird crime, donuts, dead bodies, and Lula's over the top fashion sense. Fortune and Glory picks up where Twisted Twenty-Six leaves off. Grandma Mazur, recently widowed after a few hour marriage to one of the Lay-z-Boys, needs Steph's help to find the keys to her late husband's fortune (which may or may not exist). Sounds easy, except there's a gangster with a habit of dismembering those who get in his way also searching for the keys. Evanovich is deep in a rut, but the set pieces still make me laugh and she manages to string them together plausibly, or at least what passes for plausibly in Stephainie's world.

Look Alive Twenty-Five

Stephanie Plum is perpetually 32, one missed FTA away from not paying rent on her outdated apartment, and has dinner with her entire family on the calendar. If that weren't enough, her cousin/boss Vinnie Plum has made her the manager of the deli his father-in-law and bankroller, Harry the Hammer, now owns.  Normally, "deli manager" is a safer job than "bounty hunter," but as we learn in the first chapter of Look Alive Twenty-Five, the last three manager mysteriously disappeared, leaving only a shoe by the dumpster.

That's really all you need to know.  Janet Evanovich hasn't been concerned with her plots since the early double-digit installments of the series.  The last dozen or so have just been an excuse to string together comic destruction of cars and/or buildings, slapstick incompetence by Steph and her sidekick Lula, the cupcake-or-babe question of whether she should be with Joe or Ranger, and general weirdness.  The books have become routine, but they're still funny enough that reading them in public  puts you on the receiving end of serious side-eye, and Twenty-Five's plot is a bit tighter than the last few. It's a good beach read or antidote to crappy winter weather.

Hardcore Twenty-Four

Since there are only so many mystery-related T words, Janet Evanovich switched to rhyming for the title of the 24th Stephanie Plum novel.  Hardcore Twenty-Four is entertaining, but far from the best in the series.  This time, Stephanie's cases mesh with Joe Morelli's - both of them are encountering headless bodies.  Steph is also the temporary guardian of a hot dog (and roadkill) loving snake and trying to stop Grandma Mazur from hooking up with a swinger in Florida.  Oh, and Diesel is back in town and back in Steph's apartment.  Evanovich hits most of her usual notes (Lula's outfits, a funeral, lunch with Grandma Mazur and Mrs. Plum, a particularly funny car death), but the main plot doesn't hang together well and the outcome doesn't fit the series's tone.  It's worth reading if you come across it, but probably not worth searching out.

Turbo Twenty-Three

Janet Evanovich may run out of T-words by the time she gets to the 40th Stephanie Plum book.  Turbo Twenty-Three isn't as good as Two for the Dough, Hot Six, or  To the Nines (few of her double-digit books have been), but it's her best in a while.  Steph (accompanied by Lula, of course) find her FTA highjacking a tractor trailer full of ice cream.  He steals Lula's car so they chase him in the truck.  You know that's not going to go well, and it doesn't.  Even worse, there's a dead body (frozen, coated in chocolate and rolled in nuts) in among the frozen treats.

It turns out that the ice cream company has hired Rangeman to solve a series of sabotage incidents, so Ranger sends Steph undercover at both his client an a rival.  While working the cup line gives her a few leads, that's not how she finds the murder.  No, she uses coincidence and a few leads from Grandma Mazur's new boyfriend, a bartender who looks like Willie Nelson only older (yes, this induces Mrs. Plum to chug "iced tea" at dinner).  Oh, Steph (unwillingly) and Grandma Mazur (willingly) also help Lula and angry little person Randy Briggs break into reality TV.  Several laugh-out-loud scenes and a good (although abruptly solved) mystery make Turbo Twenty-Three worth the time.

Tricky Twenty-Two

Janet Evanovich is in a rut, and has been since about 2010.  I'm not putting her on probation, though.  She still makes me laugh, and my parents buy her books and pass them on to me, asking me if I've "read the part where…" yet.  Tricky Twenty-Two had enough laughs, although not particularly large ones.  Steph's FTA is a fraternity brother accused of beating up a college administrator who'd been trying to close down Zeta House, but her investigation turns up a deranged biology professor, a second missing student, and a corpse.  In the meantime, Joe has broken up with her and she's helping Ranger bodyguard a widow at her husband's viewing (yes, Grandma Mazur has a front row seat).  Throw in Steph's mom ironing with a large glass of "iced tea," a visit to Cluck in the Bucket, an attempt at baking, Lula's glasses, and a car death involving geese, and you've got Tricky Twenty-Two.  Amusing, but disposable even by the standards of Stephanie Plum.

Top Secret Twenty-One

I just looked back at my reviews of Janet Evanovich's books, and there's a theme.  Ms. Evanovich needs to slow down a bit, because she's become too dependent on a formula.  It's a good one (the plots, despite the wacky details, are well crafted and I laugh my way through each installment), but it's a bit tired.  Top Secret Twenty-One has two main plots, but otherwise fits the mold.  Stephanie's hunting for Jimmy Poletti, car dealer, smuggler, and Stephanie's ticket to continued rent payments.  Meanwhile, a Russian assassin from Ranger's past is trying to kill him.  Mix in vodka tastings, angry little person Randy Briggs, Grandma Mazur's bucket list, radioactivity, and feral Chihuahuas and the result is an entertaining but essentially forgettable comic mystery.  Worth reading if it's there, but not up to the standards of the series's early installments.

Takedown Twenty

Once again, Janet Evanovich pulled out the Stephanie Plum formula, and once again it worked.  Evanovich has been coasting since about book ten or eleven (my theory is that with multiple series, she's spread herself too thin), but Takedown Twenty made me laugh and contained a decent mystery.  Uncle Sunny - beloved to the Burg for his habit of crooning Sinatra at weddings while wearing a red bow tie.  That habit clearly outweighs his reputation for killing people, so when some kid uses his phone to video Sunny running over someone, well, public sentiment is on Sunny's side.  Not on the side of the bounty hunter tasked with bringing him in.  Oh, and Sunny is also Joe's Grandma Bella's nephew, so Steph not only has to bring in a "connected" and popular old man, Bella has cursed her.  And she keeps seeing a giraffe (which Lula has named Kevin) running around Trenton.  Maybe she's better off helping Ranger find the serial killer who murdered a Rangeman client's mother.  Or maybe she should go to work for the butcher her mother has invited to dinner.

While not up to the first dozen Plums, Takedown Twenty is a funny, fast-paced, and well plotted book.  Evanovich works in car death, a crazy Lula outfit, Grandma Bella in a Mets cap, a secondary FTA, family dinner, and a funeral without making it feel like she's working from a checklist.  It's an afternoon's diversion, and not so taxing that you can't read it while sipping some of Mrs. Plum's "iced tea."

Notorious Nineteen

Janet Evanovich still makes me laugh, but she's in a rut.  Sometimes it feels like she's started writing her Stephanie Plum novels with a checklist.  Grandma Mazur talks about her (desire for a) sex life?  Check.   Car death?  Check.  Proposition from Ranger?  Check.  Family dinner (during which Steph's mom chugs "iced tea")?  Check.  Bob the dog?  Check.  Appearance by one or more colorful recurring characters?  Check (in the person of Randy Briggs, little person and IT-guy-turned-security-guard).  Outrageous outfits on Grandma Mazur and/or Lula?  You had to ask?

Notorious Nineteen ticks off all the boxes, and arrays them around a reasonable mystery.  Geoffrey Cubbin disappeared from a local hospital after an emergency appendectomy, but before his court date.  He'd embezzled from the retirement community he ran, and since her cousin Vinnie bonded him out, Stephanie has to find him, dead or alive.  It turns out that Cubbin isn't the first person to disappear from Central Hospital in the past few months, and one of the nurses on duty seems to be living far above her income.  It's a pretty well-constructed plot, but it's also about 75 pages short of a novel, so Evanovich pads it out with a homeless man trying to retrieve his magic statue from Uncle Sandor's Buick and/or Steph's apartment and Ranger's friend's wedding - in which Steph has somehow ended up as a bridesmaid.  It's Jersey, so I don't have to tell you the dress is...unique.  These subplots collide with only a tiny bit more coincidence than I like, and Grandma Mazur's costume when she goes undercover at the retirement home is a classic, but the series hasn't managed to combine the kind of humor that makes it a bad idea to read the book in public with a tight plot since about 9 or 10.  Evanovich now writes several series.  Perhaps it's time for her to slow down a bit so she can string together the set pieces with a little more plot.  Then again, I'll keep reading the Plum mysteries because they still make me laugh out loud.

Explosive Eighteen

Maybe Janet Evanovich needs to slow down. Explosive Eighteen made me laugh out loud (as Stephanie Plum's adventures always make me do), but the story never hung together. At the end of Smokin' Seventeen, Steph flew to Hawaii, but with whom - Ranger or Morelli? The answer was neither...but things got complicated. On the way home, her seat mate slipped a photo into her bag, left the plane at LAX, and was murdered. So now Steph has hit men, the FBI, and her family pressuring her to come clean about her vacation. On top of that, the bail bonds office still hasn't been rebuilt, she's having trouble with the low-level FTAs that pay her rent, Joyce Barnhart is making her life miserable (again), and Grandma Mazur has joined a bowling team headed up by Annie Hart who thinks Steph needs a love potion. There's a mix-up or two with the love potion, the shooting of a wig, a discussion of the physical resemblance between Tom Cruise and Ashton Kutcher (no, I don't see it either), and the most skeevey thing Vinnie Plum has ever seen - but not much of a plot. I recommend skimming the dull bits and slowing down when you start to giggle.

Smokin' Seventeen

I still look forward to the new Stephanie Plum novels, but I wonder if Janet Evanovich does.  She's been in a bit of a lull since about 13 or 14 - they're still fun, but a bit more routine.  I wonder if she's preparing to wind down the series around #20 or so.  That being said, Smokin' Seventeen is a nice diversion for a holiday weekend.

Vinnie Plum is back in business - his father-in-law is once again bankrolling the bail bonds office.  Unfortunately, the actual office was fire bombed at the end of Sizzlin' Sixteen so Vinnie, Connie, Steph, and Lula are now working out of Mooner's RV.  It's a nice plot device which allows for the proper amount of Mooner content - he's amusing, but a little bit goes a long way.  The lack of an actual office is not good for business, but the bodies appearing at the construction site where the office used to be are even worse.  The body of Lou Dugan, owner of a local topless bar and all-around shady character appears one morning, pinky-ringed finger reaching out as if signaling from beyond the grave.  Soon after, the decaying bodies of several of Dugan's business associates and poker bodies turn up - one of them addressed to Stephanie.  

This is not Steph's main problem, though - Morelli's Grandma Bella has put a sex curse on her, she still can't choose between Morelli and Ranger, and her mother has decided to fix her up with an old classmate who's returned to Trenton.  Dave Brewer was the captain of the football team back then, but now he's returned home after serving time for financial shenanigans in Atlanta - perhaps not an ideal mate, but he can cook, so Steph at least considers him until he gets creepy.  

All of this (as usual) is set against a framework of Lula's outfits, minor FTAs (including an alleged vampire and a capture that involves a fight over a bottle of wine), funerals, car death, and family dinners.  The ending seems a bit contrived, and while Smokin' Seventeen is entertaining, it's not particularly memorable.  Maybe Evanovich needs a Bella to put a spell on her - a good one that brings back the right balance of wackiness and tight plotting.

Sizzling Sixteen

Stephanie Plum considers herself lucky - she has a job which doesn't require pantyhose, an off-and-on relationship with Joe Morelli, and something inexplicable with Carlos "Ranger" Manoso.  And, thanks to her Uncle Pip, she has a lucky bottle - it's red and looks like a handblown beer bottle, and at least Uncle Pip didn't leave her his false teeth.  Grandma Mazur got those, of course.

Steph isn't feeling very lucky, despite the bottle, as Sizzling Sixteen starts.  Her cousin/boss Vinnie has been kidnapped, and since Vinnie's father-in-law Harry the Hammer has sold the bail bonds business to venture capitalists, if they don't find Vinnie, Steph, Lula, and Connie will all be unemployed.   This isn't one of Evanovich's more tightly plotted books, but it's fun.  There's the usual minor FTA (in this case an octogenarian polygamist), a crazy Lula diet (thankfully dropped by the middle of the book), Car Death, an encounter with Ranger, and an argument with Joe (over peanut butter) which leads to Steph doing the unthinkable and actually having groceries in her fridge.  All this (and cameos by Joyce Barnhardt and Moon Man Dunphy - who's running Trenton's largest HobbitCon out of a decrepit RV) floats around Steph, Lula, and Connie rescuing Vinnie (in his underwear), losing him again, and using illicit means and a garage sale (seriously) to free him again.  I'm not sure, really, how to review any books in this series, but how can you not love a book that includes Connie's talent for stink bombs and hundreds of Hobbits storming a mobster's mansion?

Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Lula doesn't like cops, something Janet Evanovich refers to in most of her Plum books.  So what does Lula do when she sees a man decapitated in front of her?  Ask Steph to call her boyfriend, Trenton detective Joe Morelli.  There's a slight hitch - when they return to the scene the body is missing and Joe and Steph have broken up after an argument about peanut butter.  Further complicating matters, Steph is once again working part time for RangeMan Security, this time at Ranger's request.  And this is all before Lula and Grandma Mazur decide to enter a barbecue cook-off.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen is a bit of departure for Evanovich because the main crime seems to get less attention than the subplot.  The headless man is celebrity chef Stanley Chipolte and there's a million dollar reward for solving his murder so Lula and Grandma Mazur decide to enter the cook-off in an attempt to find the killer.  Even with the help of Lula's new man, a cross-dressing fireman who bears at least a passing resemblance to Julia Child, they are far from successful.  This thread focuses more on the home aspect of Steph's life - the killers are found but the murder takes a back seat to Lula's and Grandma's attempts to make non-burnt, non-toxic barbecue sauce.  It does allow Evanovich to channel her inner teenager, with a lot of bodily function humor, most of it from Lula.

The RangeMan plot is a little tighter, and gives Steph a chance to show that she's not merely lucky.  Several of RangeMan's security clients have been burgled, and it looks like an inside job.  Steph's job is to casually investigate the RangeMan employees while doing background searches for clients.  This turns out to be a dead end, but while visiting a recent break-in with Ranger, she figures out how the crime were committed.  Using that information, they lay a trap for the robbers and save the security business.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen is well plotted, but the plot is really just a framework against which the insanity of Steph's life is set.  So we get multiple Car Deaths,  a family dinner (with the cross-dressing fireman and a produce manager named Peter Pecker whom Steph's mom thinks could be her new son-in-law), a few appearances by Joyce Barnhardt, a fire in Steph's apartment which does not reach her indestructible 70s-painted bathroom, and a secondary FTA.   Junior Turley is a flasher with a regular route (and yes, Grandma Mazur is a regular) whose capture is up there with Punky Balog.  Not only is there the unsuccessful attempt to capture him during a funeral with Grandma's help, but there's also why he was arrested.  It's middle-of-the-pack Plum, but still funny enough that reading it in public is a risky endeavor.

Plum Spooky

Stephanie Plum has a problem.  No, it's not the scientist who broke his boss's nose with a coffee cup and then disappeared after Vinnie Plum wrote his bond, or Lula's romantic problems, or the fact that Joe Morelli's brother Anthony was kicked out by his wife and is currently living with Morelli - and has been shot in the butt with a nail gun.  Or even the fact that Diesel has reappeared in her living room.  Her problem is Carl, Susan Stitch's pet monkey.  Susan has gone on her honeymoon and left Carl with Steph.  So while dealing with her FTA, who is apparently in cahoots with the Unmentionable Diesel is trying to catch, Lula's problems with Tank, and Morelli's frustrations, she also has to deal with a monkey who gives people the finger, plays GameBoy, and gets into an argument with Grandma Mazur about how to eat mashed potatoes.

Steph and Diesel locate their respective quarries in the Pine Barrens, where they also encounter the Easter Bunny and Edgar the Fire Farter (whom, of course, Steph unknowingly invites to dinner).  Plus about twenty more monkeys.  There's a creative Car Death and  the unexpected and amusing capture of a minor FTA, just as we expect from a Stephanie Plum novel.  This is also one of the books where Stephanie is truly in danger - the Unmentionable uses Steph as a 'reward' for her FTA, and while we know she will save herself with panic and a well-placed knee, the scene is a bit creepier than we expect from Evanovich.  Still, she knows that we like our Steph books moderately fluffy so Steph escapes unscathed and even monkey-free, and in search of yet another car to destroy.

Plum Lucky

How can I review Plum Lucky?  Stephanie is not a deep character, and Janet Evanovich's between-the-numbers novels are short and fluffy.  It's tightly plotted enough to get past the silliness, with the slightly scatty but ultimately sane Stephanie Plum holding everything together.

On St. Patrick's Day, Grandma Mazur 'finds' a duffel bag full of cash.  So, like the 72-year-old juvenile delinquent she is, Grandma decides to buy an RV and head to Atlantic City, bringing along angry little person Randal Briggs as a bodyguard and driver.  Unfortunately, the money actually belongs to a gangster named Lou Devina.  Also on the trail of the money is Snuggy, a jockey-turned-bank robber who talks to animals and is on a mission to save a race horse, the supernatural bounty hunter Diesel, and Stephanie whose mother has threatened to cut off her supply of pot roast and pineapple upside down cake if she doesn't bring her grandmother back Right Now.  Along for the ride are Lula, the hooker-turned-file-clerk who kept her wardrobe when she changed professions and Connie Rosolli, the Jersey-girl receptionist at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds who packs a lot of attitude and a semi-automatic pistol.  Of course they find Grandma and recover the money and even save the horse, but that's not really the point.  The plot exists only to tie together the set pieces, including Lula creating a diversion by throwing nickles on the ground...while wearing gold lame spandex that's shorter, lower cut, and tighter than usual, and a few jokes about the bodily functions of quadrupeds. It's fluffy fun, not to be read on public transit unless you're trying to get a three-seat for yourself.