I. LOVE. THESE. BOOKS. SERIOUSLY. I am obsessed with this series. And you know when your brain keeps telling you that this is ridiculous, there must be a hundred books that are written better, or a better mystery, or whatever? Well, I don't care!!! This series is my ultimate guilty pleasure. I was hooked with the first one and have read the entire series thus far - including all the stupid mini books in-between. Now, those mini books I could do without and they always feel like an attempt to make sure they even got the loose change in my pockets, but I still get them anyway because it is like a fix until I can get the real thing. So what is so great about them? Stephanie - hilarious. I laugh out loud (a rarity for me when reading a book) constantly when reading these books. I love the murder mysteries which are often at least a step above the formula ones. I love the triangle between Ranger and Morelli and Stephanie. That is something that often gets old for me in other books or TV shows, etc. but for some reason, it just doesn't get old here for me. 13 books in and I am still captivated by the tension between the three. I love the setting - being from CT and living in NY and knowing people from Jersey - she nails that dead on! I mean, an exaggeration of it but still.... And the quirky characters. I love that. I like books that the people are really odd and funny. But it still has to be believable - I hate odd just for the sake of odd - like, hey look at me - I'm wacky - wocka wocka!! But these characters are so outrageous and I still find myself being able to believe it and go along with the book. Do things get repetitive? Sure, I mean, she blows up a car in every single book. But for me, that makes it all the more funny - I can't help it, I laugh every single time. I love how she is so clumsy and crazy and manages to get things done in spite of herself. I love how she is always battling her weight - that constant struggle between carrots and carrot cake! I love her family, the situations she gets in, her friends, her grandmother.... Really, did I mention I love these books? I can't explain it, but I am compulsive about buying the next one as soon as it comes out in paperback and I have kept the entire set and read it through again a few times. I feel that the story just gets better and better as you know the characters more and she doesn't have to spend time introducing them, she can just get on to the chaos. I tried to talk my mom into reading these books and she just couldn't get past the introduction to Morelli (which IS pretty odd - basically two kids experimenting - I just ignore it and skipped beyond it and was able to enjoy the rest of it) and all - I think she was a little too uptight (sorry mom!) to enjoy the whole feel of the series. If I had to sum up the series, I think it would have to be Funny, fast and loose!

The easy review here would be to just bash and toss around a bunch of mehs and ughs and dress it up with "stupid and trashy" and maybe a well placed "crappy pile of claptrap." Truth is, I didn't like it. But a lot of people do and I certainly read enough of what other people consider garbage to want to keep my glass house situated in a stone free environment.

I'll just say that this one wasn't for me. There were a few laughs and it moved quickly, but I never found anything to really connect with. I really wish I would have because there are a lot of books in this series and it would have been great to secure this kind of job security in my reading. Oh well, I guess it wasn't meant to be. Damn.

Pure gold in humor! 4 unforgettable characters: Stephanie Plum, Joe Morelli, Ranger and Grandma Mazur. Let's do a lil' recap:

Stephanie: Your everyday girl... with great humor, a bit of sass, lots of determination and an inability to know her limits. But each and every time you root for her to win!

Joe: Honest. Smart. Good-looking. Apparently great in bed. Knows his food. Wants to make Stephanie happy. But knows his limits.

Ranger: Everyone's secret freebie. Apparently a god. Attitude that won't quit but turns you on at the same time. Always finds you just in time, that is, before you get yourself into too much trouble.

Grandma: OMG, can you be any funnier? She has a gun. And she shoots it often. But she's whacked out most of the time. I NEED to meet her.

So... 20-something books to go in the series, but this first one will hook you right away. I need to keep on reading.

Laugh out loud comedy!

Let's face it - the basic premise of this book is so whacked that you just gotta laugh before you even start reading it! Stephanie Plum, a down on her luck and out of work lingerie buyer cons her cousin, Vinnie, into giving her a job as a "recovery agent", a skip tracer, a bounty hunter. She's brash, vulgar, feminine, cute, sexy, tarty, sassy, funny and, on top it of it all, she's got balls made of brass. She actually believes she's qualified to chase down an old high school acquaintance, Joe Morelli, now a hardened career cop charged with murder and skipping bail.

The dialogue is perfect - smack dab in the centre of a triangle cornered by New York police procedural, hammed up sit-com and cute romance! Yeah, yeah, yeah ... really hard to believe, I know! But Evanovich pulls it off, doles out a generous helping of laugh out loud writing and manages to keep the whole book light enough to polish off at a single sitting! Stephanie's grandmother is completely off the wall and positively hilarious.

Now if only she could have figured out a way to resolve the mystery part of the plot without resorting to the painfully trite cliché of the gloating criminal holding the heroine at gunpoint explaining how nasty he intends to be in intricate, precise detail! And, puhleeeze ... our hero, Morelli, just HAPPENED to catch the whole conversation on tape which of course exonerates him completely from the murder charge.

Full marks for the fluff - humour, romance, characterization, banter, dialogue! Failing grade on plot! OK, we'll call it 3-stars and let everybody decide for themselves whether they want to take on the second book in the series. I'm going to give TWO FOR THE DOUGH a read and see how it goes!

Paul Weiss