7-20-2000
Hot Six
Janet Evanovich
Miss Pym chooses to ignore--for the moment--all the fuss about publishing on line, publishing on demand, putting books together by printing sections of several different books. She will concentrate on the fewer downright publishable books that are available to us. Such as Stephanie Plum's latest adventure. Stephanie, I need not remind you, is the Jersey girl bounty hunter whose love life and adventures around the back roads of Trenton and South Amboy are constantly on the brink of disaster and the edge of the law.
In Janet Evanovich's "Hot Six" (St. Martin's Press; $24.95;
294 pages) Stephanie has two men in her love life, both having to do with
law enforcement, and in "Hot Six" one of them--Joe Morelli,
the cop--hires Stephanie to bring in Ranger, who has missed his court
date. Nothing new with Morelli, who had his head under Stephanie's skirt
at the age of seven, relieved her of her virginity at eighteen and can
remove her Victoria's Secret string bikini before she knows he's in the
vicinity. Ranger is Stephanie's mentor, an ex-ranger with no known address
who was arrested for 'carrying concealed.'
New cop on the job arrested him when Ranger was being queried about a
murder; every other Trenton cop knew Ranger carried concealed and was
happy to let it
remain that way. Ranger had been caught on video just minutes before the
youngest son of an international black-market arms dealer was shot and
barbecued. Ranger has now gone to ground; and if Ranger does not mean
to be
found, he won't be. Hence Morelli hiring Stephanie to bring Ranger in.
Steph's surrounding
cast include Lula, a blond-haired black woman who totes a Glock and Stephanie's
grandmother, now moved out of the family home and into the bounty hunter's
only bedroom. Which isn't doing much for Stephanie's love life. She now
sleeps on the couch and Ranger, who can get into any place sans keys,
wanders in and out of her dreams (or are Ranger's
visits the real thing?) As if this weren't enough she has adopted a dog
with an eating disorder; a pimple the size of a beach ball has developed
in the middle of her chin; the homicidal maniac who barbecued young Ramos
blows
up her car and all in all it's looking like a bad hair day in Trenton
and a splendid day for us, as we rock in our hammocks and enjoy the fun
from a safe distance.
So, by the way, does Evanovich who with her family now resides in Hanover,
New Hampshire. She lives in a house by the Connecticut River with a couple
of acres and her husband and son and daughter, all of whom work on the
family enterprise known as Stephanie Plum. Which, according to Evanovich,
would be a perfect place, if only it had a mall. "My favorite exercise
is shopping, and my drug of choice is cheese doodles. I motivate myself
to write by spending money before I make it. And when I grow up I want
to be just like Grandma Mazur!"
