It's spooky how she can keep it up

Just finished Janet Evanovich’s Plum Spooky. Not very spooky but it sure is funny. While not a new Evanovich novel, January of 2009, it’s not all that old. The main reason I decided to put it in here though is that she has a new one coming out in a month or so, so figure this one might introduce some folks to her work.

While she has other books out there Evanovich’s main body of work deals with Stephanie Plum. She basically brings out one book a year, titled with a number. In addition she occasionally adds another book around the holidays, what are called her between the number books. These between the number books are usually thinner than the regular books but the feature Stephanie Plum and follow the usual formula. Plum Spooky is a between the numbers book.

Stephanie Plum is a Jersey Girl, Trenton NJ to be exact, and the novels all take place in Trenton and the surrounding areas with the occasional side trip to the Shore or Philly. As introduced in the first book Plum is unemployed and her prospects aren’t great. So she winds up taking a job as a recovery agent for her cousin Vinnie’s bail bond agency, to the horror of her proper, suburban housewife mother, who wonders why she can’t work at the bank or the button factory like the daughters of all her friends. So that sets the background for the books. Evanovich writes to a formula for her plots. Stephanie gets a number of recoveries at the beginning of the story, mostly minor skips but usually one fairly heavy character, and the book traces her adventures in trying to apprehend her cases and get the rent money. Suffice to say Plum is not the most competent of recovery agents and thus follows some funny misadventures because while nominally a sort of who done it the books are mainly comedy and Evanovich has a knack for it. Her imagination comes up with some of the wackiest characters I’ve ever come across and you will split your sides laughing.

While Plum Spooky isn’t quite as good as some of her other works it’s still very good. The main problem as far as I’m concerned is there are a few periods in the book that seem to drag compared to the others but if you start with this book you’ll never notice it. In this one Stephanie is chasing a nerdy scientist who has broken the nose of his supervisor and run off with a piece of equipment they were working on. Not so dangerous until the geek teams up with a vampire looking partner named Wulf with a sinister reputation, not to mention supposedly paranormal powers. When the supervisor turns up dead with a broken neck and a hand print burned in his neck things take a decidedly more deadly turn. Helping Stephanie in her endeavors are her regular sidekick, Lula, a former ‘ho gone straight who is supposed to be a file clerk in the bail bond office, Diesel, a large, attractive, mysterious agent of some sort who claims to have some kind of special powers of his own and is related to Wulf and who complicates the hell out of Stephanie’s life, both professional and personal, and Carl, a monkey that Stephanie is involuntarily baby sitting. If you think a monkey can’t be an interesting character you’ve never run across Evanovich. In addition a large part of the book takes place in the Pine Barrens, the home of the Jersey Devil, and many other interesting characters according to Evanovich. Along the way we run across the Easter Bunny, Sasquatch and Elmer the Flame Farter. One of the disappointments of the book is that Plum’s grandmother, one of the more colorful characters in a series filled with them, only makes a cameo in this one. While they are not as fast and furious as in some books the laughs are just as loud as you might expect in a book that has Elmer and a monkey that can flip you the bird. There are even a few tense moments when Stephanie finds herself in the hands of Wulf and his pet scientist. You know she’s gotta get out of the situation however, the real mystery is how much destruction will be wrought as she does it.

All in all another good book by Janet Evanovich and, while maybe not up to the usual standards of the “number” books, a good place to start if you want to check her out or a worthwhile acquisition if you are acquainted with the numbers but were leery of the holiday books.

Thanks for the listen.