Trouble in Trenton

Ten Big Ones
by Janet Evanovich
(St. Martin’s Press, $25.95 312 pp. Hardcover)
For the uninitiated, Stephanie Plum is a Jersey girl from Trenton, who was divorced, unemployed and running out of appliances to sell when she took a job working for her sleazebag Uncle Vinny as a bounty hunter. That was in One for the Money, and here we are nine capers later, and better than ever. I say we, because in every scene you’re right there with Stephanie riding shotgun (which is really not safe).

As you may expect, Stephanie knows more about hairspray and mascara than she does about apprehending felons, and things tend to get away from her. Like felons. Since she keeps her gun in a cookie jar in her kitchen, and she hasn’t got great aim with the pepper spray, so things get interesting.

This time around Stephanie is minding her own business standing outside a deli with her “associate” Lula when she witnesses a robbery in progress and her car explodes. Again. It was the Molotov cocktail, but still. This is like the umpteenth car that has exploded on Stephanie, and she’s beside herself.

Stephanie has bigger worries than her car when she tells police she can ID the hold-up guy and he turns out to be connected to a dangerous gang. The fact that she drove into his turf and accidentally runs over a few of his “associates” doesn’t improve things. In fact, the gang puts a hit on her.

Dodging a specially imported killer (from L.A.), and commitment noises from her on-again, off-again boyfriend Joe Morelli, her sister’s wedding plans and the air in Trenton, Stephanie runs for cover and lands splat in Ranger’s lair. Lair, not hair. Ranger is also a bounty hunter, among other mysterious things, and has come between Stephanie and her Levi’s before. Before she lived with Morelli.

Never mind the gangsters, will Stephanie survive another encounter with the lethally sexy Ranger?

Janet Evanovich's website is at www.evanovich.com