PLUM SPOOKY: A Stephanie Plum Between-the-Numbers Novel
Janet Evanovich
St. Martin’s Press
Mystery
ISBN: 9780312383329
One day, life is normal and you’re a single, attractive female bounty hunter babysitting a friend’s monkey and chasing down bail bond jumpers in a used Jeep armed with a can of mace and a set of handcuffs. You come home looking forward to a night of pizza, beer and TV with your boyfriend. The boyfriend has left a message on your cell phone that he is babysitting his kid brother who has been kicked out by his wife, so he won’t be over. Then you spot a pair of strange men’s boots in your living room and 6’3” of blonde, blue-eyed muscle sprawled on your bed.
Stephanie Plum is a hunk magnet. She already has Joe Morelli and Ranger, two of Trenton’s most eligible bachelor law enforcement types, wrapped around her little finger. Morelli and Stephanie have been an item since they were in high school. His family and hers consider it a matter of time before they make it legal. They have nearly made it to the altar twice, but life gets in their way.
Ranger, the mysterious Cuban surveillance company executive, could be called “life” as in life force, but he’s not really the problem. In fact, Morelli has Ranger pretty much pigeon-holed in Stephanie’s life as a colleague. He’s dangerous and great backup in emergencies and was a potential threat as a romantic rival at one time, but Morelli and Ranger have sorted things out where Stephanie is concerned. Mostly. Then there’s Diesel. He has everybody spooked. Who is he? What is he? And how does he walk through walls? Diesel tends to show up around holidays. With Stephanie’s help he defused some Christmas elves who got out of hand, a not-so-lucky leprechaun, and a romance writer with larceny in her lonely heart.
He is the designated plug puller on a class of super-human individuals known among themselves as the Unmentionables. There are rules of engagement among Unmentionables, but when one of them gets carried away, tosses the rule book aside and jumps the fence, Diesel is summoned to fix things. Since Diesel and Stephanie have worked together on a couple of incidents, he takes Stephanie’s hospitality for granted. This time, it’s Diesel’s close relative, Berwulf Grimoire, aka Wulf, who has come up with a plan to control the world’s climate.
One of Stephanie’s bail jumpers is a nerdy physics whiz named Munch, wanted for stealing a magnetometer from a Trenton lab. When she and her sidekick Lula try to collar the skinny little guy, he nips out the pet door of his house and the chase is on. It turns out that the magnetometer Munch stole is exactly what Wulf needs to complete his weather control device, hidden in a secret facility in the Jersey Barrens, a wildland just outside Trenton.
Anyone who has read a Stephanie Plum novel knows that as soon as her latest set of wheels is introduced, something ballistic is in sight and her insurance rates are going up again. Using the Jeep to navigate the Jersey barrens in a monsoon storm proves to be an adventure for Stephanie, Carl, the pet monkey in her charge, Lula and a number of woodland creatures, leading to a classic Stephanie Plum demolition derby event.
Morelli quite literally phones it in during the three-day madness when Stephanie is in more danger than ever before at the hands of the murderous Wulf as she pursues Munch through the Jersey Barrens. Out of cell phone range and the car with Ranger’s tracer left behind, Stephanie is left to her own devices in the forest primeval. If, after reading this book you are tempted to go out and get a pet monkey as cute as Carl for a pet, think twice. Just because Carl can play Super Mario Brothers on a hand-held computer doesn't mean they all can.
PLUM SPOOKY is the fourth installment in the Between-the-Numbers series with more certain to follow.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.
© Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
