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A ripe, ready and hilarious Stephanie Plum
''To the Nines''
Reviewed by John Orr
Stephanie Plum is the kind of bounty hunter who, as she says, has ''a
lot more luck than
skill,'' and who admits ''I'm not good with guns and I've never found the
time to take
self-defense. The only black belt in my closet is a narrow snakeskin with a
gold buckle.''
She's a Jersey girl who knows how to walk down a flight of stairs in
high heels and a
tight mini-skirt and who definitely appreciates her beau, cop Joe Morelli,
and her sometimes
co-worker, Ranger, who is ''the sort of lover who could make a woman forget
she values
commitment.''
Because ''To the Nines'' is hilarious, fun and exciting, and a great read
from front to
back.
Except, close to the end, when Plum just can't figure out who is the real
bad guy, gets
kidnapped and has to claw her way out of a nasty trap. Which is still good
reading, just
irritating.
Another woman detective who doesn't think through the clues and only
confronts the bad guy
after he has found her.
Why doesn't Plum get to solve the crime?
''You know, you're the second guy who has asked me that,'' said
Evanovich over the phone a
few weeks ago, ''who has only read No. 9.
''I try to make each book a little different,'' Evanovich explained,
''and sometimes
Stephanie just kind of runs right through it and saves everybody, and
sometimes she needs to
be saved, and sometimes she's smarter than other times.
''I write in first person, so we all know what's in Stephanie's head,
and this book I
wanted to have a little bit of a scary ending and I didn't want the reader
to know .'.'. so
Stephanie couldn't know. .'.'. It's kind of unique to this book.''
But I had figured it out, maybe halfway through the book, I pointed out
to Evanovich, who
was at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim before a speaking engagement.
''Oh, you're no fun!'' she said, with a charming and amused lilt.
(Throughout our talk,
Evanovich was always vibrant and very intelligent.)
''The truth is that this is a really character-driven series. When I
first started this
series, I did a lot of research. I hung out with some bounty hunters, I got
to know a lot of
bail bondsmen, I made friends with a lot of cops in Trenton, I learned to
how to shoot a gun
.'.'. and by the time I was writing the second, third book, what I was
realizing was that
while you don't want to sound stupid and make mistakes and destroy
credibility, the crime
aspect of this was not what was generating my audience; that people were
loving the
relationships, they were loving the dysfunction of the family, of the
relationship of
Stephanie and her job. It's kind of like a soap, where you make an
investment in these
characters, and then you keep coming back because you want to see where
they're going.
''So the crime part, the crime line, while it's necessary to have, it's
really not the most
important thing to most of my readers. I think they're perfectly willing to
kind of gloss over
that a little bit for the sake of getting really involved with the
characters.''
But
Evanovich, the writer, put in the clues that made it possible for the reader
to say, ''Oh,
come on, Stephanie! Figure it out!''
''I would be willing to bet that almost all of those people who said
that, who made that
mental note, were men,'' Evanovich replied. ''I think it's the way a man's
mind works.
''I try
not be sexist ... well, OK, I don't care if I'm sexist. The truth is, I'm
just not politically
correct, I don't go there, don't care about it.
''But I think that men see the action in the book and I think they tend to
be more analytic
about it. I think that men are historically trained to look for the story
line, the crime
line, the action line. And women immediately make that emotional investment,
and are turning
pages so fast that they're not necessarily doing the analysis with the crime
line that the men
are doing.''
Well, this man certainly turned the pages rapidly, and had a good time
doing so ... when I
will find the time to go back and read the first eight Plum novels, I don't
know, but I will.
In this one, Plum and Ranger have to save their boss, Vinnie, from severe
embarrassement
after he writes an immigration bond, and the immigrant skips.
But, like Evanovich says, the crime line is not all that important. What's
great about this
book are the characters, who are delightfully and amusingly realized.
Here, just one aspect of this book: food. Lula, a huge former ''ho'' who
now works in
Vinnie's office, has decided to lose weight (for purposes of love) by eating
only meat. A lot
of meat. Which means she carries entire chickens and several pork chops at a
time in her big
purse, which leads to her being followed everywhere she goes by packs of
dogs. And Plum's
sister Valerie, who is very, very pregnant: ''"I love gravy,' she said,
spooning the overlow
into her mouth, eating the gravy like soup. "I dream about gravy.''
And Plum herself: ''I always got the fettucine Alfredo with sausage.
And then because I
didn't want to die, I got some red wine to help unclog my arteries.''
There
were scenes so
funny I had to stop reading to wipe tears from my eyes.
And, despite what Evanovich saying about not letting the readers know
because Plum doesn't
know, it is a thoroughly enjoyable mystery for those of us ... men or women
... who like to figure
out the clues as we go along.
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