Dirty
Thirty, by Janet Evanovich.
Fast food writing: tasty but vitamin-free. Fills the gap but no nutritional value.
Janet Evanovich, the Queen of Fast-food writing, has now
produced her 30th novel starring Stephanie Plum, ‘Jersey girl,
successful underachiever working for Vincent Plum (her cousin) Bail Bonds as a
recovery agent, hunting down losers who’ve skipped out on their bond.’ The plots of each story vary very little, but
what makes them compulsively readable are the reliability of the characters to
charm and entertain the reader every time. Who could resist Lula, former Ho and
more than generously proportioned bestie of Stephanie – she rides shotgun on
various pick-ups of miscreants, always dressed in unforgettable combinations of
outrageously undersized skirts, tops (?) and spike heels. She also has a gun in her bag which she will
use at the slightest opportunity, even though she is the lousiest shot in
Trenton.
And Stephanie’s grandma Mazur: she likes to attend viewings at local funeral
parlours; in fact the last one she went
to was a triumph of the undertaker’s art, the corpse being so healthy-looking
that Grandma would swear that he was ready to rise up out of his casket and ask
her to dinner! Grandma has a gun too,
she’s always packin’ and hoping that she will get an opportunity to fill
someone fulla lead some day. Stephanie’s
mum, Grandma’s daughter, manages to keep the household together without having
a nervous breakdown – for the most part;
when situations finally get too trigger-happy with various family
members, she has been known to start knitting very long scarves and calling on
the assistance of Jim Beam.
And let us not forget Stephanie’s love interests – not
just one but two, yes TWO hotter than hot males: Joe Morelli, Trenton detective, and Ranger,
ex-special forces member and owner of a very prosperous security firm. They both vie in their different hot ways for
Stephanie’s attention, each having different advantages in that Joe, like
Stephanie was brought up in the neighbourhood – and he has Bob the dog, another
singular character, especially when Stephanie has to dogsit him for two
weeks. Ranger is Cuban and makes every
female heart skip a beat – even the reader’s, and Bob likes
him too – what
treachery! He’s supposed to be a one-man
dog!
Which all goes to show that I can rabbit on loftily about
Fast-food writing as much as I like, but no-one does it better, or more
entertainingly than Janet Evanovich:
roll on Book Thirty-one! FOUR STARS.
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