Great Stephanie Plum Books by Janet Evanovich

This is the fourth book in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. Stephanie, a bounty hunter is after Maxine Nowicki at the request of Maxine's boyfriend Eddie, who claims that Maxine stole his car. While Eddie likes to pretend that he is also looking for love letters that he had sent to Maxine, there really is an ulterior motive for wanting Maxine found.

This is a fast paced, exciting book with a crazy cast of characters and more twists and turns than you can imagine. It is highly entertaining and fun even if it is highly unrealistic. Things get a little crazy when Stephanie's car gets blown up as does her apartment, causing her to move in with Joe. This causes quite the stir with his family who is sure that a baby is on the way! But it's all in a days work for the seemingly indestructible Ms. Plum. This is one of the best books of the series.

Plum Lucky is a Stephanie Plum between the Numbers Novel by Janet Evanovich.and it's a pretty funny mystery. This book includes many of the cohorts from the Stephanie Plum series including Lula, Grandma Mazur, Diesel and small bits of Joe and Ranger. Without revealing too much of the story, Stephanie and friends try to track down Grandma Mazur who has taken off to the casinos to gamble with the "lucky" money she has found. Grandma is also be chased by a little man in green pants who thinks he is an invisible leprechaun and who is claiming the money is his to save a horse. Of course, we soon find out that he stole the money, for what he considered a good cause.

Numerous antics abound in this quick, funny mystery. This mystery is very entertaining and is only 166 pages long in hardcover. If you haven't read any of the Stephanie Plum series, this book may help persuade you to start. If you are a regular reader of this series, this book will leave you looking for more. I think that the Plum between the numbers book are just fillers until the next book in the series comes out, but that's okay, they are just plain fun.

Stephanie Plum is unemployed and down on her luck. She's from the Burg, and she's been laid off from her job as a lingerie buyer, so she needs to get a job quickly. She decides to work for her cousin Vinnie (she blackmails him into giving her the job) as a bail-bond recovery person. Problem is Stephanie doesn't own or know how to use a gun and she has never sought or apprehended a person in her life.

Her first job is one which will pay her a lofty $10,000 to apprehend a skip. Unfortunately for her, the culprit is her teenage heartthrob Joe Morelli, the same man who stole her virginity when she was just a teenager. It seems that Joe is wanted for murder but before she can go after him, Stephanie must manage to find enough money for a gun, a really bad car and a can of mace.

This first book in the series is a very funny. Stephanie desperately tries to make a go of it as a bounty hunter. Her first case is a humorous series of mishaps as she tries to bring in the man she won't admit she still cares about. She runs into him often, but somehow she always manages to let him get away. This is more of a screwball comedy with a little bit of mystery thrown in. Stephanie evens buys an alarm for Morelli's car so that he can't take it away from her (she has stolen it from him in an effort to get him to come get it so she can catch him). Of course, Stephanie has Joe's car for another reason. She keeps getting her cars blown up or torched.

There are some pretty amusing scenes when Stephanie tries to get Lula to help her apprehend a skip. Stephanie has to meet Lula and another woman where they are working and this spells trouble for Lula as she is beaten up by the crazy boxer. In addition you get to meet, Grandma Mazur, Stephanie's parents and her pet hamster. This book is fast paced, well written and is a great debut novel in the series. Stephanie Plum is a hard nosed, gutsy heroine who always gets her man/woman, even though she manages to mess up often.

Hot Six by Janet Evanovich is another fun romp in the Stephanie Plum series. For those of you unfamiliar with the series, Stephanie Plum is a former lingerie buyer, turned bounty hunter, who works for her sleazy cousin Vinnie. In this book, Stephanie is shocked to find that the FTA ( failure to appear) Vinnie wants her to bring in is the always mysterious Ranger, her sometimes mentor. It seems that Ranger was caught on security tape entering a building just before it was torched, and just before a gangster's dead body was found there.
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This book has a lot of action and some new characters. There are two men (Habib and Mitchell) who threaten Stephanie with harm if she doesn't lead them to Ranger. But instead of being scary, they come off as being quite humorous. Then, there is Ranger himself, enlisting Stephanie's help in spying on the family of the man he is accused of killing. Of course, Stephanie cannot do this without some sort of trouble. She gets herself shot at while hiding in a tree while spying. Another FTA sets Stephanie's shirt on fire, when she tries to bring him in adding to the silliness of this book. Additionally, Habib and Mitchell have a run in with Bob, Stephanie's dog just when he is having diarrhea, making for more fun and making the thugs look like bubbling idiots.

I found this book to be pretty funny. Since this is the sixth book in the series, I really thought that things would start to get stale, but this book proved me wrong. I particularly enjoy the antics of Stephanie when she sets out to pick up a skip with her friend and former prostitute Lula. The two of them make quite a funny team when they can't seem to do anything right.

Plum Spooky is the latest between-the-numbers novel about Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, and is the first full length between the numbers book. That may not be a good thing. In this novel, Stephanie is paired with Diesel and they are working together to find Martin Munch who is on Stephanie's most-wanted list for failure to appear. They are also looking for Diesel's cousin, Wulf Grimoire, a killer who has a way of disappearing without a trace, in a poof of smoke, and who likes to burn his victims.

This book is somewhat amusing, but is missing some of the essentials that are so much a part of previous books. There is very little of Grandma Mazur and Joe Morelli is stuck babysitting his moronic, cheating brother. We see a little of Ranger, a lot of Lula (she breaks her engagement to Tank because he won't get rid of his cats and she's allergic) and not much of anyone else. Diesel is another guy looking to sleep with Stephanie. That now makes three.

That is a bit unrealistic even for Stephanie Plum books. Some of the gags are dumb, including a monkey who makes obscene gestures and a man who farts fire. Overall, this was a decent book and there was a lot of action, but it should have been better. It seems to dissolve into the type of slapstick comedy reminiscent of the three stooges. This book has no romantic appeal and is so dumb in parts that I can see where it might not have any appeal to a lot of readers. I think that Janet is putting these books out too quickly and they are losing some of their appeal. It also seems like this was either written by someone else, or maybe Janet is tired of writing the whole series.The spark appears to be gone. Maybe it's time to tie up loose ends and start on something else. Things between Stephanie and Ranger and Stephanie and Joe seem to be at a standstill. Nothing seems to have progressed in the last few books.Plum Spooky it really isn't. It's not too funny, witty or well written. It's more like Plum Dumb.

In Two for the Dough, the second Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich, bounty hunter Stephanie is on the hunt for Kenny Mancuso. Kenny a man from the burg, who is just out of the army, shot his childhood friend. Stephanie's cousin Vinny, the bails bondsman has bailed Kenny out, and now Kenny is a skip.

Unfortunately for Kenny, Stephanie is his bounty hunter and she is armed with an attititude, defense spray, a stun gun and her gun. Stephanie decided that the best way to flush Kenny out is to talk to another childhood friend, Spiro Stiva. All is not as it seems with Stivo, as he asks Stephanie to help him find 24 missing coffins. Seems Spiro is the stepson of Constantine Stiva, owner of a local funeral parlor. Stephanie decides to use Grandma Mazur as a cover at Stiva's funeral parlor, in order to investigate. Things really get crazy when Grandma Mazur decides to pack her own pistol.

Stephanie also has help in this case by her mentor, the ever hot Ranger and her boyfriend Joe Morelli. But things really get crazy for Stephanie when she starts getting embalmed body parts in the mail, and she soon realizes that someone may get her, before she gets Kenny Mancuso.

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich and starring Stephanie Plum is another wild ride. Stephanie is in charge of watching a Goth teenager by the name of Zook. Zook's mother, Loretta Rizzo, has skipped on her bail hearing, or so it seems. Stephanie isn't sure if Zook's mom took off or if she has been kidnapped.

Then there is the little matter of money, money which has been stolen and may be hidden in the vicinity of Stephanie's boyfriends house ( Joe Morelli). Word has it that Joe's cousin has buried stolen cash there. Stephanie believes that the missing money has something to do with Zook's mom's disappearance. Things get dicey as Stephanie tries to help Joe figure out why people keep trying to break into his house. As usual, Stephanie helps Ranger do personal security for a 61 year old singer, and she and Lula end up on television.

Many questions are answered in this book, but not all. Are Lula and Tank engaged? How does Stephanie get in of and out of a reality television show? You'll have to read Fearless Fourteen to find out the answers to these, and many other questions.

Three to Get Deadly, follow-up to Two For The Dough finds Stephanie Plum lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter looking to bring in a man affectionately known as "Uncle Moe Bedemier." Uncle Mo is a local ice cream store owner who has missed his court appearance for carrying a concealed weapon. So it's Stephanie's job to bring Mo in and collect her money.

But when Stephanie goes to Mo's ice cream store and starts questioning his friends and neighbors, someone knocks her out. She wakes up in the ice cream store next to a dead man. The dead man turns out to be a well known drug dealer, so Stephanie realizes that Mo is into something big. She stumbles across the body's of two more well known drug dealers and begins to think that Mo has turned into a vigilante trying to clean up the streets of the burg.

This book moves along at a quick pace and includes all of the hysterical antics of the first two in the series. Of course, there is her love interest, Joe Morelli, her clueless family, the very hot Rangers and her amusing friend and co-worker Lula. Three to Get Deadly is another great addition to the Stephanie Plum series.

Seven Up by Janet Evanovich is another crazy Stephanie Plum romp. In this book, lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter, Stephanie has to bring in a geriatric skip, but you'd never know he was geriatric by the way he keeps giving poor Stephanie the slip.

Stephanie's skip, Eddie DeChooch doesn't appear to be on the run. He is seen oftentimes driving around Trenton in his white Cadillac, but Stephanie can't seem to catch up with him. When Stephanie goes to Eddie's house to try and confront him there, she finds the dead body of Loretta Ricci in his shed. Eddie has a lot of explaining to do, if only she could catch him.
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Things get hilarious when Grandma Mazur is kidnapped, potheads Dougie and Mooner disappear and Stephanie has to call in Ranger for help. Ranger has other things on his mind, the kind of things Stephanie can't share with boyfriend Joe Morelli, and he uses this as leverage, if Stephanie wants his help.

If you are looking for more depth, however, you will not find it here. Stephanie's relationship with Joe does heat up in the book, but it's hard to take his proposal seriously. Stephanie's family gets a little bigger, as her sister Valerie show up with her kids in tow. Valerie is divorcing her husband, and wants to try her luck at being a lesbian.

This book is another hilarious trip through Trenton, complete with dead body's, missing people, goofy goons and the usual "hot" men. All in all, a fast paced, enjoyable read

In Lean Mean Thirteen Stephanie is on the lookout for Dickie Orr, her creep of an ex-husband. Stephanie really doesn't want to find Dickie, but goes looking for him as a favor to the ever hot Carlos Manoso, aka Ranger. Well, it turns out that Dickie is in all sorts of trouble and Stephanie wants to hurt him. So what does she do, she tries to do this by finding out whether Dickie is involved with drugs or money laundering.
The next thing you know, Dickie is missing.

The police find blood and bullet holes at Dickie's place and because of Stephanie's feelings towards her ex-husband, she becomes the prime suspect in hisdisappearance/apparent death.

But Dickie has a long list of people looking to hurt him, including former business partners, as we see Dickie has been involved with people involved with money laundering and drug running.

Lean Mean Thirteen is a fun book, but I find these later books in the series are getting a little stale. Stephanie's love life is stagnant, nothing ever gets resolved there. Cars and homes and people still get blown up, and as always, Stephanie is accident prone. It seems like this book is just rehashing previous ones in the series. It also seems like someone else is doing the writing, as the characters seemed to be "different". While it's an okay read, I would probably just rate it a 3/5.

Former lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum has her hands full. Seven year old Annie Soder and her mother Evelyn have disappeared. Steven, Evelyn's estranged husband is looking for them. When he and Evelyn were getting divorced, they signed a custody agreement and now that Evelyn has taken off with Annie, Steven wants the money which the bond guarantees. This money, which Steven wants to use to find Annie is secured by a mortgage on Evelyn's grandmother's house.

Not the typical job for a bounty hunter, Stephanie still feels compelled to take the job since the grandmother lives next door to Stephanie's family.

So in addition to the usual missed court dates, and a woman accused of grand theft auto, Stephanie has to follow a trail left by Annie and her mother, and she finds more than she bargains for. She finds out that Steven is somehow involved with the very scary Eddie Abruzzi, so she enlists the help of her mentor Ranger. Of course no Stephanie Plum story is complete without Joe Morelli, Lula, and Grandma Mazur.

This is another comic adventure in the life of Stephanie Plum in the burg. As usual, cars get blown up and things have not changed in the dynamics between Stephanie, Joe and Ranger. By the time you get to Hard Eight, things start to get a little stale. Some new ideas would be good, and maybe a resolution with the love triangle should happen soon.

In Sizzling Sixteen , Stephanie enlists the help of Lula and Connie to help save her sleazy cousin Vinnie who has managed to get himself into deep trouble because of his gambling debts. Even though Vinnie isn't too popular with the ladies, their jobs depend on Vinnie's business so they all chip in to do what they can to rescue him.

Sizzling Sixteen wasn't a sizzler but still harmless fun with Ranger, Mooner and Joe thrown into the mix.