Stephanie Plum

Stephanie is the bounty hunter creation of Janet Evanovich. These novels are just great light hearted reading. Stephanie seems to get herself into all sorts of dilemmas, some created by her incompetence, others by her friends, relatives and lovers and you gotta love her, because of her personal vanities and quirks. Along the way Evanovich finds the humour in way out yet believable situations. She is one definite funny author, I've not laughed so much while reading for a long time.

Set in violent Trenton, New Jersey where everybody young and old carries a gun. Stephanie herself is not much good with guns despite her profession and leaves it mostly at home. Trenton has the highest homicide rate in the US and probably not the best place for a pacifist bounty hunter.

Although she lives alone, she seems close to her family, her grandma Mazur is too old to care what society thinks and thinks that Stephanie has the coolest job in the world. Grandma wants to rock, shoot, date like her granddaughter. Stephanie's mother is the foil for all this insanity "why me?"

And as fiction has it, she has 2 men in her life, the mysterious Ranger and Joe Morelli the cop. Of course it's great for Stephanie's ego that she has two love interests to flirt and have sex with. And there ain't nothing much wrong with either of them, except if it was real life Ranger would have found a chick more available for his needs and Morelli would have had a couple of one night stands. What Italian stallion would endure the kind of competition that he has?!

I have read just about all the Stephanie Plum books and the last two's plots were getting a bit tired. Evanovich started a between the numbers series with a new character Diesel but their plots seem too fantastic and sank new lows. I think she is showing signs of fatigue although it gives me hope that Twelve was a roaring good read and written not too long ago.