Review Tuesday: Four to Score by Janet Evanovich -- #StephaniePlum #ComicMystery #ReviewTuesday

Four to Score by Janet Evanovich

Pan Books, 1999

Okay, I’ll admit it. Stephanie Plum is my secret vice. When I’m feeling frustrated or depressed, when I have writer’s block or I’m dealing with the boss from hell, nothing will cheer me up like a one of Janet Evanovich’s goofy and brilliant comic mysteries.

In case you’ve never met Stephanie, she’s a cute, disaster-prone Italian-Hungarian young woman, born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey, who gave up her job in lingerie sales to work for her bail-bondsman cousin Vinnie as a bounty hunter. When suspects who are awaiting trial skip bail, it’s her job to track the them down and bring them in, thereby earning a share of the bail money. Stephanie has a gun (which she keeps in her cookie jar), a hamster (named Rex), an BBW in-your-face ex-hooker friend (named Lulu), a weakness for donuts (which she consumes by the box), a live-wire grandmother (who loves attending funerals), and two sexy guys who find her hot but who’ll never, ever commit: snarky cop Joe Morelli, to whom she lost her virginity behind the counter in an ice cream store, and suave and mysterious fellow bounty hunter Ranger.

The plots in the Stephanie Plum books tend to be delightfully convoluted. Four to Score is no exception. Stephanie’s hired to find an ex-waitress who’s accused of stealing her sleazy boyfriend’s car. Maxine has disappeared, though, and it’s clear that someone else is looking for her – someone who’s murdering her co-workers, scalping her mother, and cutting off the fingers of her friends. Meanwhile, coded clues keep showing up in unpleasant places, leading Stephanie on a gruesome scavenger hunt. Stephanie enlists the help of six-foot-five transvestite rock star Sally Sweet, who’s a whiz with ciphers, only to have her car and her apartment firebombed by Sweet’s wanna-be boyfriend.

This is just the start. However, the mystery isn’t really the point in a Stephanie Plum novel (even though the plot in this one was very neatly executed). One reads these books for the characters, the dialogue, the absurd situations and the humor. Oh, and the sexual innuendo. There’s nothing explicit about these tales but there’s a lot of delicious lust simmering below the surface. In this particular installment, Stephanie and Joe actually do the deed (or so we’re told). When Joe’s witch of an Italian grandmother gives Stephanie the Evil Eye and tells her she’s pregnant, that’s close to the last straw. But this is a Stephanie Plum novel, so of course there’s more frantic hilarity to come.

Apparently there are now twenty-seven books in the Stephanie Plum series (which is a bit scary). I’ve read about a third of them. You’d think that the offbeat characters and bizarre situations would get old, but somehow Ms. Evanovich keeps it fresh. Still, this early installment was one of the best I’ve read.

It’s pretty difficult to capture the tone of a Stephanie Plum novel in an ordinary review, so I’ll leave you with a snippet from Four to Score to enjoy.

“Uh oh,” Morelli said.

“What uh oh?”

“You have that look … like you’re redesigning my kitchen.”

“You don’t have a cookie jar.”

Morelli looked at me like I was from Mars. “That’s what you were thinking?”

“Well, yeah.”

Morelli considered that for a moment. “I’ve never actually seen the purpose for a cookie jar,” he said finally. “I open the box. I eat the cookies. I throw the box away.”

“Yes, but a cookie jar makes a kitchen homey.”

I got another one of those Mars looks.

“I keep my gun in my cookie jar,” I said by way of further explanation.

“Honey, a man can’t keep his gun in a cookie jar. It just isn’t done.”

 

Looking for a hit of pure entertainment? Try Stephanie Plum.