Stephanie Plum is Smokin' Once Again!

I have been reading the Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series for well over a decade. The series is currently at book seventeen with an eighteenth book scheduled for release later this month. Up until the fourteenth book, I was enjoying the series immensely, but I noticed that books 14, 15 and 16 weren't up to the quality of the previous 13 books and it felt like perhaps Ms. Evanovich was losing interest in writing for this character. Well, Janet Evanovich is back! Smokin' Seventeen bears all the earmarks of a classic Stephanie Plum novel: wacky characters, several dead bodies, hilarious situations and a bevy of destroyed cars.

For those who have never read a Stephanie Plum novel, here's a synopsis of the series:  Born in Trenton, NJ and raised in the Chambersburg neighborhood (or the Burg as it's known locally) of Trenton, Stephanie is of Italian-Hungarian descent, has a fast metabolism, brown curly hair, blue eyes, a penchant for getting into trouble and is a bounty hunter - a really, really bad bounty hunter! In One of the Money, the first novel in the series, Stephanie blackmailed her cousin Vinnie, into hiring her as a bounty hunter, when she has zero experience. Somehow through dumb luck and perseverance, Stephanie is fairly successful. In Smokin' Seventeen, "dead bodies are showing up in shallow graves on the empty construction lot of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds. No one is sure who the killer is, or why the victims have been offed, but what is clear is that Stephanie's name is on the killer's list...With a cold-blooded killer after her, a handful of hot men and a capture list that includes a dancing bear and a senior citizen vampire, Stephanie's life looks like it's about to go up in smoke."

Other than books 14-16, the Stephanie Plum series does not disappoint. Yes, the situations are improbable but that is what makes it for fun, light-hearted reading. If you haven't read any of the series, I say give it a go. If you stopped reading along the way because you started to get disappointed, then pick up Smokin' Seventeen and enjoy the fun again!