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Fiction. Mystery. Humor (Fiction.) HTML:Discover where it all began�??#1 New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich's first "snappily written, fast-paced, and witty" (USA TODAY) novel in the beloved Stephanie Plum series featuring a feisty and funny heroine who "comes roaring in like a blast of very fresh air" (The Washington Post). Meet Stephanie Plum, a bounty hunter with attitude. In Stephanie's opinion, toxic waste, rabid drivers, armed schizophrenics, and August heat, humidity, and hydrocarbons are all part of the great adventure of living in Jersey. She's a product of the "burg," a blue-collar pocket of Trenton where houses are attached and narrow, cars are American, windows are clean, and (God forbid you should be late) dinner is served at six. Out of work and out of money, Stephanie blackmails her bail-bondsman cousin Vinnie into giving her a try as an apprehension agent. Stephanie knows zilch about the job requirements, but she figures her new pal, el-primo bounty hunter Ranger, can teach her what it takes to catch a crook. Her first assignment: nail Joe Morelli, a former vice cop on the run from a charge of murder one. Morelli's the inamorato who charmed Stephanie out of her virginity at age sixteen. There's still powerful chemistry between them, so the chase should be interesting...and could also be extremely dangero… (more)
User reviews
This series was recommended to me as sheer brain candy, and that's probably about right. It's a quick, easy, but not particularly impressive or memorable read that worked fairly nicely as a palate cleanser between more serious books. I will say that although there are some lighthearted aspects to it -- Plum's family are pure comic relief, for instance -- overall it was less of a fun romp than I was expecting. There's a general air of sleaziness about the whole thing, and it features some very dark elements of sexual violence.
If I hadn't already picked up most of the rest of this series at a library sale, I'm not sure if I'd bother seeking out the next one, but since I have, I'll continue on with it the next time I want something this particular variety of mindless.
But the voice is so engaging, there's lots of witty, snappy dialogue, lines that zing, colorful secondary characters and a sense of place. In this case, Trenton, New Jersey, the kind of place any New York City native like me loves to snark at, and Evanovich brings it to life as a community. Everywhere she goes, there are convenient relatives, inlaws and former schoolmates to lend her a hand.
This is fluff basically, and I know it. Fluff with a chicklit feel. But sometimes fluff is what you want, and I rather enjoyed adventures with Stephanie, even if I suspect she won't wear well if she doesn't prove a fast learner in the future books. Although she has a lot of grit, and in this book she's brand new to the business of running down fugitives, Too Stupid to Live heroines who have to be rescued by the guy they're pursuing (in more ways then one) are not my cuppa.
One warning, though: this book (as with the rest of this series, I'm finding) really cries out to be read in large chunks. Not a book to read 20 pages here or there on the bus; much better as a weekend by the pool or beach book.
Money, money, money
Stephanie Plum needs money. She’s lost her job and is about to lose her car. Worse, her apartment is rapidly becoming furniture-free. Desperate times call for desperate measures so Stephanie talks her low-life cousin Vinnie into giving her a job. He wants her filing safely in the office, but when she realises the money available for bringing in Failure to Appears Stephanie insists on a more high profile role.
Her first assignment: bring in Joe Morelli, local cop turned homicide suspect. Experienced cop turned outlaw vs. ex-lingerie saleswoman? No problem. Although Stephanie and Joe have a history involving a bakery floor, her lost virginity and a sort-of hit-and-run, this is definitely going to remain professional…
Unfortunately, during the course of her investigations Stephanie attracts the attention of Benito Ramirez, a violent boxing champion with a passion for hurting women. Who can protect her from Ramirez? Morelli could, but she needs to turn him in…
Life in the burg
From the start, I found the writing often made me laugh out loud. A trip to her parents’ home for dinner prompts the comment that: “The clock on the dashboard told me I was seven minutes late, and the urge to scream told me I was home.” The first person narration helps to create a self-effacing persona and an often very entertaining narrative as Stephanie tries to balance visiting her mother, earning a living and not getting herself killed.
Stephanie isn’t the world’s greatest bounty hunter, which can lead to some difficulties (like a suspect using her bullets to arm himself) and she’s not that keen on shooting people, which means that her gun is really more for decoration than protection. She manages to survive using a combination of luck, more luck and help from two men: the mysterious Ranger and the equally devious but more outwardly respectable Morelli. These two are core characters in the later books and their relationships with Stephanie are well established here – they offer a wryly amused helping hand combined with a hefty dose of flirtation and a smidgeon of shock at Stephanie’s latest predicament. In fact, their roles are fairly indistinguishable and just mean that Stephanie has two helpers to call upon. She isn’t exactly a feminist who’s keen to be doing it for herself and is quite happy to accept a bit of support. More importantly, the scene is set for a love triangle to develop in later books.
The story is populated with other entertaining characters. Vinnie, Stephanie’s cousin, is susceptible to blackmail because of his doings with a duck. Grandma Mazur is convinced that she could be a bounty hunter, too, to the despair of Stephanie’s long suffering parents, and Stephanie’s date just wants to sell her home appliances. It is impossible to take any of the characters seriously as they are all very one-dimensional. This has the positive side-effect that serious injuries don’t seem that terrible as the reader has not built up a connection with these characters.
There is a sense of danger in the book and at least one character is very badly hurt, but Stephanie is the kind of character who will only ever be badly hurt enough to warrant a trip to A&E when the action’s over. This means that even when Stephanie is tense the reader can be fairly relaxed, albeit wondering incredulously how she will escape from her latest predicament. Meanwhile, there is plenty to entertain, from the police pool betting on when Stephanie will put out for Morelli, to Morelli’s shock when Stephanie ‘commanders’ his car, to Stephanie’s horror when she accidentally answers Morelli’s phone to Morelli’s grandmother.
There is a large dose of family fun thrown in, too, as Stephanie regularly visits her parents’ house for free food and a lecture on her career choice. The family dynamics are recognisable to anyone who’s been a mother or a daughter and are enjoyably predictable…enjoyable mostly because it’s someone else getting irritated! The humour is farce and slapstick, with each instalment in the series working almost like an extended sitcom episode. The pace is quick and there’s plenty happening throughout the book. The crime itself it suitably resolved and, although it is the start of a series, this is easy to read as a standalone book.
Conclusions
Action packed and often laugh-out-loud funny this is chick lit with a dose of Serious Stuff. Read it for the daft events, odd musings and odder twists. This is recommended for readers who like their crime to be comic. Probably slightly less suitable for feminists and those who take prostitution (known as ‘being a ho’ in these books) seriously. This can be read as a standalone book but the rest of the series is equally entertaining, so if you like this you’ll probably like the rest. I think it is definitely worth the £5.99 RRP especially since (once you’ve read the rest of the series and forgotten how it all started) this is worth re-reading for the details you forgot and the details you remembered with a slightly incredulous smile. This is at least a second reading for me and it hasn’t made it to the charity shop yet. Need more convincing? It won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasy Memorial Dagger. Whatever that is.
This edition features 290 pages of entertainment in a slightly small font, available from a mere penny (plus P&P) second hand on Amazon.
I don’t even know what this series is. Crime? Mystery? Comedy? A bit of everything put together? Stephanie Plum, brand new, untrained bounty hunter from New Jersey has been in print for decades and in dozens of stories. Soon there’ll also be a movie. So I’ve finally settled down to read the series.
The book begins with a few pages I’d rather forget. As a child, Joe does something disgusting to Stephanie, and then some years later she deliberately runs him over with her car. I’d read that much of the book a few years ago and then put it down because I wasn’t sure I wanted to read about characters who did things like that. But put those incidents out of your mind because the rest of the book is great.
When we meet Stephanie she is completely broke, and selling off her possessions one by one as she tries not to be evicted. She falls into Vinnie, her cousin’s bounty hunting business out of desperation (and by blackmailing her way into the job).
I took a deep breath and leaned close to Vinnie, whispering in his ear. "I know about Madam Zaretski and her whips and chains. I know about the boys. And I know about the duck."
Stephanie is enticed by the promise of a big fee if she can bring in Joe Morelli – the man who’s been a thorn in her side since she was six and he was eight.
I put a hand to the desk to steady myself. "Ten thousand dollars for finding one guy? What's the catch?"
"Sometimes they don't want to be found, and they shoot at you. But that hardly ever happens."
Morelli is a cop who’s been wrongly accused of murder, and it turns out Stephanie isn’t good enough at her job yet to bring him in – so they end up working together.
Morelli doesn’t take Stephanie’s determination to bring him in seriously. In fact, nobody does.
I shoved my hand into my shoulder bag, pulled out my revolver, and jabbed Morelli in the chest with it. "You're under arrest."
His eyes opened wide in astonishment. "You have a gun! Why didn't you use it on Ramirez? Jesus, you hit him with your pocketbook like some sissy girl. Why the hell didn't you use your damn gun?"
We’re introduced to a cast of characters along the way – characters who will play bigger parts as the series goes on. Characters including the widely-loved Ranger – a man who’s slightly more adept at Stephanie’s new profession than Stephanie is.
You have a permit to carry a concealed weapon?"
"Yes." And I was at least ten percent convinced it was legal.
"Where'd you get your permit?"
"Ranger got it for me."
"Ranger Mañoso? Christ, he probably made it in his cellar." He shook out the bullets and gave the gun back to me. "Find a new job.”
The best thing about this series is the atmosphere. This is working-class, multi-ethnic New Jersey and the characters operating in the area are all so unique and entertaining. We can feel the heat of the place, and really feel like we're seeing the rundown locations the characters visit. The dialogue is hilarious, and Stephanie’s ‘voice’ is just the right balance of humour and emotion that keeps you reading.
However, I don’t think the grandmother was as entertaining as she’s supposed to be – there’s eccentric and then there’s over the top. I know all about crazy Eastern European grandmothers, but loading a gun and shooting the dinner? That’s a bit too crazy for me.
It’s so great watching Stephanie dive in without a clue, getting anything and everything wrong, and yet still stumbling on, determined to make this work. It’s impossible not like her, and not to cheer her on.
Of course she comes through in the end.
"Hello," I called, gun now in hand, barely able to hear myself over the pounding of my heart. "Who's here?"
Morelli sauntered out of the kitchen. "Just me. Put the gun away. We need to talk."
"Jesus! You are so fucking arrogant. Did it ever occur to you I might shoot you with this gun?"
"No. It never occurred to me."
“What the hell kind of outfit were you supposed to be wearing?"
"It was my slut outfit. I wanted to speed things up."
Just get it over with, I told myself. Barge right in, check under the bed for rapists, pull on some rubber gloves, and clean up the mess.
The unconventional partnership between Stephanie and Morelli runs through the entire book, with moments where they’re furious with each other and moments where they’re so great – watching each other’s backs. Stephanie’s vehicle’s been repossessed, and her replacement only occasionally works, so she takes it upon herself to ‘look after’ Morelli’s much fancier car.
"I didn't want anyone to steal your car," I said. "So I had an alarm installed."
"It wasn't 'anyone' you were worried about. It was me. You had a goddamn alarm installed in my goddamn car so I couldn't snatch it out from under you!"
"It worked, too. What were you doing in our car?"
The setting is a place where everybody knows everybody, and they all know each other’s business. Police officers are married to relatives, who have friends who work in the businesses in the shopping areas. Evanovich creates a community with seemingly little effort; Stephanie operates in her community like it really exists. It was so well done.
“The car belongs to Morelli."
"Oh boy," Dorsey said. "I can hardly wait to hear this."
I figured I'd embellish the truth a little, since the police might not be up on the finer points of bounty hunterism and might not understand about commandeering.
I will definitely be continuing with this series – in fact I started the second book just minutes after finishing the first. That should tell you something.
Evanovich's characters are about as deep as a puddle -- but fun none-the-less. If you're the sort who enjoys complex plots and intricate character development this isn't the book for you. If you've come for a giggle and a bit of literary escapism, this may be your stop. A predictable, fast-paced story line carries the reader from start to finish in no time with lots of guffaws along the way. While aspects of the plot could certainly be considered dark, Evanovich manages to avoid the grisly details and barrels on through toward the picture perfect ending. Just the thing for fans of chick lit or light-hearted mysteries.
In this first of the Stephanie Plum series, now up to 17 instalments, Stephanie has lost her job as a discount lingerie saleswoman, her car has been repossessed, and her
This series comes highly recommended by many bloggers, and this feels like a very rocky but promising start to a series, much like STORM FRONT did recently. Stephanie’s a pretty strong character, although I’m used to Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski from Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky’s books respectively, so compared to them she’s a bit of a wuss. It’s a very steep learning curve from underwear sales to bond recovery agent and it is pleasing to see Stephanie go through this, that she’s not magically catapulted into the hard-bitten criminal world knowing everything.That said, she is gifted with a bulls-eye shot and a certain amount of savvy which seem a little incongruous for a lingerie saleswoman who lost her job and couldn’t find a new one.
Evanovich has put together a cracking set of characters. Stephanie herself is going to take some work, but I loved her family – the difficult, match-making mother, the grandmother who wants Stephanie’s hot pants and gun and gets hold of both (much hilarity ensues), the grumpy father who doesn’t really do anything. The close-knit family-based community reminded me very strongly of the neighbourhoods in the V.I. Warshawski novels. Joe Morelli is quite a character too and I’m glad that he’s going to be coming back – he seems a pretty honourable gentleman with a solid combative streak that will see him tussling with Stephanie for a while to come.
Plot was a little thin on the ground, as there wasn’t much of a mystery to solve, but the writing is exciting if not high-falutin’ and there are some good sub-plots with potential to stretch over several books (particularly the Benito Ramirez strand). I was a bit surprised at the coarseness and brutality of some of the occurrences and descriptions (not sure why – Vic and Kinsey are just as bad).
All in all, not brilliant as a standalone, but I’ll be following up at least to number 2 in the series to see how Stephanie gets on.
Stephanie Plum has been out of work for six months: her car's been repoed, she's sold her furture and
My first experience with Evanovich was "Plum Lucky." I've never laughed at any book as much as that, and so I decided to give Plum a run from the beginning. Of course, when you start with the end then go back to the start, you go from well established characters, Plum Lucky is the 15th or so in the Plum novels, and go back to when author and writer are just feeling them out. All things considered, One for the Money is definately worthy of all the praise it's received, and all the sequels that have followed.
One for the Money is most likely considered Chick Lit, and I suppose that's okay, but I think guys couldn't help enjoying it, as well. Stephanie Plum is brash, outspoken, and humorous, and the reader is quickly compelled to care about her. She is definately not perfect, she's definately no "Wonder Women" and she knows it, but she's tenacious and is quick to admit she's screwed up and learn from it. And Stephanie is not the only great character in the book. There's also Lula, Connie, Stephanie's Mom, Joe Morelli (the man who screwed up her life,) Vinnie (what DID he do with the duck????), but my favorite Plum novels character is Grandma Mazur. When Grandma Mazur shot the chicken at the dinner table while Stephanie's mom is trying to play matchmaker with Bernie the appliance salesman as dinner guest, I laughed so hard I completely lost it.
Morelli is actually not guilty of the crime he’s accused of and he makes Stephanie a bargain that if she helps him find the missing witness to his supposed crime, he’ll let her bring him in and collect the $10,000 bounty on him. So she does and they indeed figure it out, but when they find the witness he’s frozen solid. But as luck would have it, the gun that will vindicate Morelli is also found and it does prove that he fired on the dead guy in self-defense.
I may try another but I hope that Stephanie gets a clue soon.