Four to Score: A Stephanie Plum Novel (Paperback)

For those readers unacquainted with Stephanie Plum, she's a skip tracer, i.e. bounty hunter, working for her cousin Vinnie in Trenton, NJ. She's also a disaster magnet. So, when her latest assignment, Maxine Nowicki, who jumped bail after being charged with the theft of her estranged boyfriend's car, handcuffs Plum to the door of her own fridge, what's left to do while awaiting rescue but finish off the leftover banana cream pie, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of baby carrots? And that's before her car explodes, her apartment is gutted by fire, and she gets raw egg in her hair.

As I work my way sequentially through the Stephanie Plum series, I stand amazed at the imagination of author Janet Evanovich that continually ups the ante on the absurdity of the situations in which Stephanie finds herself and the eccentricity of the characters that gravitate to our heroine like lint to a black dress. Yet, the craziness never seems pushed or over the top, but is just Stephanie's karma in a nutty world.

The continuing "male lead" in all of Plum's adventures is Joe Morelli, the rascally plain-clothes Trenton cop with whom Stephanie has a long love-hate relationship. When they were just pre-pubescent kids, the sexually precocious Joe lured Stephanie into his father's garage to play choo-choo. As teenagers, Plum ran down Morelli with the family Buick after Joe relieved Stephanie of her virginity on the floor behind the eclair counter in the pastry shop in which she worked. Yet, when Plum and her pet hamster Rex are left homeless after their apartment is torched in FOUR TO SCORE, it's the extra room in Joe's house into which Stephanie moves. Will she and Joe find True Love before they kill each other?

Like its predecessors in the series, this book is exceeded in trashiness perhaps only by a lurid bodice-ripper. But, should you pick up a Stephanie Plum adventure, I virtually guarantee you a good time.

For those readers unacquainted with Stephanie Plum, she's a skip tracer, i.e. bounty hunter, working for her cousin Vinnie in Trenton, NJ. She's also a disaster magnet. So, when her latest assignment, Maxine Nowicki, who jumped bail after being charged with the theft of her estranged boyfriend's car, handcuffs Plum to the door of her own fridge, what's left to do while awaiting rescue but finish off the leftover banana cream pie, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of baby carrots? And that's before her car explodes, her apartment is gutted by fire, and she gets raw egg in her hair.

As I work my way sequentially through the Stephanie Plum series, I stand amazed at the imagination of author Janet Evanovich that continually ups the ante on the absurdity of the situations in which Stephanie finds herself and the eccentricity of the characters that gravitate to our heroine like lint to a black dress. Yet, the craziness never seems pushed or over the top, but is just Stephanie's karma in a nutty world.

The continuing "male lead" in all of Plum's adventures is Joe Morelli, the rascally plain-clothes Trenton cop with whom Stephanie has a long love-hate relationship. When they were just pre-pubescent kids, the sexually precocious Joe lured Stephanie into his father's garage to play choo-choo. As teenagers, Plum ran down Morelli with the family Buick after Joe relieved Stephanie of her virginity on the floor behind the eclair counter in the pastry shop in which she worked. Yet, when Plum and her pet hamster Rex are left homeless after their apartment is torched in FOUR TO SCORE, it's the extra room in Joe's house into which Stephanie moves. Will she and Joe find True Love before they kill each other?

Like its predecessors in the series, this book is exceeded in trashiness perhaps only by a lurid bodice-ripper. But, should you pick up a Stephanie Plum adventure, I virtually guarantee you a good time.

The Sally Sweet character is probably her most memorable character. Old nemesis Joyce Barnhardt does favors for Cousin Vinny and gets to compete with Stephanie Plum for a job bringing in Maxine Nowicki. As usual, Stephanie can find Maxine, but has a hard time apprehending her. In the meantime, someone's making threats, pouring gasoline over her car, and firebombing wherever she lives. The people she contacts to find Maxine keep turning up with strange wounds, and are very silent about Maxine's whereabouts. She seems to hit cold trail after cold trail.

You should be able to solve the mystery about half way through. This was one of Evanovich's more transparent efforts. But the mystery is really beside the point. To focus on that would be like studying history instead of partying during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The story of Stephanie Plum and her relationship to the other characters are where you'll find the attraction in this book.

The scenes, the set-ups, and the dialogue are marvelous. If you have a friend who is also reading the series, you'll be trading lines before you're done with this book.

After you have read and enjoyed this book, consider how little straight comedy is written now in fiction form. Almost all of it is in the context of crime and mystery novels. What does that say about our tastes and society's state? What would a non-bounty hunting, funny Stephanie Plum be like? I suspect she could be just as funny. In many ways, she is the Lucille Ball of the 1996-2004

Overcome your stalled thinking about how much fun a book can be with this one!