[.ca] Hot Six: A Stephanie Plum Novel (ISBN 1559279656)

From Amazon.co.uk:
Low-rent bounty hunter Stephanie Plum reaches depths of personal experience that other women detectives never quite do. In Hot Six, for example, a sequence of new and hideous cars bite the dust; she finds herself lumbered with a policeman's multiply incontinent dog; and she has several bad skin days. All this when she is trying to prove her distinctly more competent colleague and occasional boyfriend Ranger innocent of a mob hit; avoid the heavies trailing her in the hope of finding him; and cope with a wife-abusing bail defaulter with nasty habits, such as setting Stephanie on fire. The peculiar joy of this series is the comic sense of place; Plum's New Jersey is one where everyone you meet, even the most dangerous of criminals, was at school with you, or stole your mother's first boyfriend, or gave your great-aunt a middling good recipe for meatloaf. Evanovich has built up an attractive cast of comic characters with Stephanie's extended family and those of her two boyfriends, the dashing and sinister Ranger and Joe Morelli (the cop whose family are only too keen on his marrying Stephanie). Hot Six will not disappoint either her fans or newcomers. --Roz Kaveney

WORLD'S MOST INEPT (BUT LOVEABLE) BOUNTY HUNTER:
After reading, in no particular order, a half dozen or so of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels, I decided that I had to review at least one of them (call it a compulsion to do so), and __HOT SIX__, being the most recent one I've read, got the nod. I believe that the plots in these novels are mostly there to provide a background for the machinations of our intrepid bounty hunter and her friends and relatives. The plot has been pretty well described in the 300+ previous reviews, so I'll just give it a very short discussion before getting into the part of this review that's the most fun for me. In her position as a bounty hunter (officially bond enforcement agent), Stephanie is given the job of apprehending and bringing to court, the man who taught her everything she knows about the art of bounty hunting, the elusive man known as Ranger. Ranger, who is out on bond, has missed a court appearance. He is the suspect of choice for a murder. Stephanie, and everyone else, knows that bringing in Ranger is impossible -- no one captures Ranger. No one! But, it does seem that everyone wants to find him, the good guys, the bad guys, and a few intermediate semi-bad guys. This situation provides background for the true meat of the novel, Stephanie's adventures and misadventures along the way. To give you a an idea of just how good a bounty hunter Stephanie is, consider the following: Most of the time Stephanie sets out on her apprehension tasks by leaving her gun at home in a cookie jar. When she does take it, it usually has only one bullet, or even none, because she has forgotten to buy more. When she does catch up with someone, her intended target more often than not gets away, and in so doing, wrecks her car, and/or sets her on fire, and/or handcuffs her with her own handcuffs, and/or just walks away while she is preoccupied with something else. At any rate her success rate on the first few tries with each bail jumper is very, very low She attempts clandestine surveillance in a nice inconspicuous "Rollswagon," a car with the front of a Rolls Royce attached to the body of a Volkswagon. Nobody'll spot this car! It's a temporary replacement for her most recent wrecked car. While trying to peer into the window of a suspect's house, our Stephanie falls out of a tree into his walled off back yard, and gets shot at. There's lots more, but you get the idea. Stephanie lusts after two men, the aforementioned Ranger, and her sometimes lover, sometimes protector, sometimes a few other things, Joe Morelli, police detective. This lust is reciprocated by both men. Stephanie has a grandmother who frequently totes a gun herself, thinks that she, too, would like to be a bounty hunter, and, spreading fear throughout the area, somehow passes the driving test and gets a drivers license. Stephanie has a sidekick named Lula who is a retired prostitute and who frequently accompanies Stephanie on her misadventures. Lula is a very large woman who dresses in skintight spandex apparel, carries two or three guns and, on every case, tells Stephanie what havoc she is going to wreak on each target. Then when the time comes, tends to run away even faster than Stephanie. Stephanie has a long suffering mother whose answer to any problem is to start ironing. And, oh yes, did I mention that Stephanie's idea of home cooking is to make a peanut butter and potato chip sandwich. There are also a few other colorful characters in Stephanie's life, both human and animal. These include her cousin Vinnie, the owner of the bonding agency, and her boss; her "arch enemy," Joyce Barnhardt; the inadvertantly comedic duo of Moonster and dougie, "the dealer" as well as her pet hamster, Rex; and Bob, the dog who eats everything he can reach, including furniture, and whom you'd like to hate, but can't because he's just too sweet. When you toss all of these people and animals in a hopper, then add a few gangsters and lunatics to the mix, you end up with a laugh or two or even three on every page from the opening line right up to to the concluding sentence. Thanks, Janet Evanovich, you keep me laughing.

Stephanie and Grandma Mazur become roomies:
At the end of my review of the previous book in the Stephanie Plum series, HIGH FIVE, I wondered if author Janet Evanovich was on the verge of trying too hard with her plotting. Then, of course, there was thread left dangling on the last page. Whose name, Morelli's or Ranger's, did Stephanie pull out of the bowl in her Night of Passion Lottery? In HOT SIX, it seems to me that Evanovich is indeed pushing it. And it turns out that Joe Morelli is the one that got lucky. Plum is a bounty hunter in Trenton, NJ, employed by Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, the owner being her scummy cousin, Vinnie. Stephanie's modus operandi is either Keystone Cops or Bull-In-China-Shop, depending on her mood and the amount of junk snacks that she's consumed. The fact that she ultimately succeeds is based purely on dogged persistence and good fortune. The skeleton of the HOT SIX plot is that Vinnie tasks Plum with apprehending Ranger, his best bond enforcement agent and Stephanie's friend and frequent mentor. Ranger has skipped bail on a ridiculous concealed weapon charge - everyone carries in Trenton - and it doesn't help that the local cops want to question him about the recent murder of a crime kingpin's son. Plum wants no part of it, least of all because she hasn't the skill to nab the ex-Special Forces soldier. But, as the bodies pile up, bagging Ranger becomes the least of her worries. Don't get me wrong. HOT SIX is as funny as any previous book in the series. It's just that Janet's imagination has, in my opinion, finally gone over the top in populating the storyline with weird characters and dropping her heroine into bizarre situations. It's gotten to the point where less wackiness may be better. It's fine that her feisty Grandma Mazur, reminiscent of Sophia (Estelle Getty) of American TV's GOLDEN GIRLS sitcom, must move in with her, but not necessary that the former take driving lessons, date the ancient geezer upstairs, or purchase a red Corvette. It's not unusual that Stephanie apprehends a couple of oddball fugitives over the course of the book, but not required that one of them here be costumed as Captain Kirk at a Trekkies gathering during the takedown. And not surprisingly, Stephanie is followed by a couple of goons who also have an interest in finding Ranger. But does one of them really have to be a Pakistani emigre who, back in the old country, used to beat unruly children working in the village rug factory? What has before simply seemed to be Plum's bad karma is now too heavy a concentration of weird to be believed. Finally, the reactions of Stephanie's mother to her antics - she say's "Why me?" and makes the sign of the cross a lot- are getting old. And Stephanie's long-suffering Dad continues to be a virtual cipher. It's time both characters were fleshed out. At least Stephanie is making progress in her love life. Is that a proposal of marriage coming from Morelli at the book's end? You think? After finishing this review, I'm off to purchase SEVEN UP.

So much fun! Please keep these books coming!:
HOT SIX by Janet Evanovich In the sixth installment of the Stephanie Plum series, HOT SIX is yet another fun and exciting novel featuring this accident-prone bounty hunter. This time around, Grandmother Mazur has had a fight with Stephanie's father, so guess who is moving in with Stephanie? Besides dealing with Grandmother Mazur's snoring at night, Stephanie's latest assignment is to track down her old buddy Ranger who is now a fugitive with the law. She also has two bumbling idiots following her wherever she goes, thinking that she would lead them to Ranger. Morelli is of course in the picture, and things are getting hot and heavy between the two of them. And Stephanie has also temporarily acquired a huge dog that cannot seem to stop eating. I cannot express how much I enjoy this series. HOT SIX was yet another fun read and I am looking forward to the next one. Janet Evanovich, please do not stop writing these books!

Irresistably Fun:
I'm normally turned off by the fodder usually topping the bestseller charts, finding it to often be mindless, formulistic garbage like "The DaVinci Code," overhyped and poorly written. Evanovich's work, however, truly stands out as endlessly entertaining, full to the brim of original characters, snappy dialogue, bizarre adventures, and a consistently lovable heroine. Don't miss this series - you WON'T be disappointed.

Fun, easy read:
This book is hilarious. It is an easy read and keeps you laughing out loud all the way through. Stephanie and her fellow colleagues and love mates are interesting and snappy. Gotta love Stephanie Plum. I plan to read all of hers.