Tricky Twenty-Two

Sassy Sisterhood

Janet Evanovich, a bestselling author, has created one of the looniest and most lovable characters—Stephanie Plum, a bounty-hunter. Better than her is her sidekick, the Amazonian Lula, former hooker, who drives a red Firebird, thinks incessantly of food and shoes, has atrocious fashion sense, and speaks her mind, whether anyone asks her opinion or not.  Lula deserves a series of her own. Between the two of them, they are a riot.

Like Sue Grafton’s alphabet series (X was out recently)  with smarty detective Kinsey Millhone, Evanovich has a numbers series starring sassy Stephanie, and the new book is Tricky Twenty-Two. (Turbo Twenty-Three is just out, so that is some speedy writing).

For those who haven’t read any books in the series before, Stephanie is of Italian descent and has a crazy gun-toting Grandma Mazur, whose antics have driven her daughter (that is Stephanie’s mother) to despair and alcoholism. She also has a hamster as a pet, a cop boyfriend Joe Morelli and a standby ‘knight’ called Ranger—both of them impossibly hot. Remember this is about a young woman, for young women—that’s the least they would expect. 

When she and Lula have to track down a missing student Ken ‘Gobbles’ Globovic, who has been arrested for beating up the dean of his college and skipped a court date, they stumble onto a bigger conspiracy.  Gobbles belongs to a college fraternity called Zeta and the members close ranks to protect their own. Then the dean gets killed and matters go out of hand.

Meanwhile Morelli dumps Stephanie rather unceremoniously, Ranger is at hand to offer her his shoulder and an assignment to protect the widow of a man who was shot dead outside his own house. Earlier his partner was also gunned down and everything connects, believe it or not, to a mad conspiracy.

The plot hardly matters, Evanovich keeps it sprinting at a brisk pace and gives Stephanie enough to keep busy. Those who have read earlier books in the series have commented that this is too formulaic, that the writer is running out of ideas and has neglected character development.  But a quick read like this one, doesn’t hurt. At least it has many laugh-out-loud bits—mostly provided by Lula.

Tricky Twenty-Two

By Janet Evanovich

Publisher: Bantam

Pages: 305