Fast and funny

Comic Thriller | Janet Evanovich

Currently reading Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich. Just finished Fearless Fourteen by the same author. Thank goodness I picked them both up at the same time!

Janet Evanovich writes best-sellers in the romance line, not something I read much of. But this series (yes, I'm on book 15!) attracted me from page one of book one. The protagonist is a wacky woman who decides to take to bounty hunting to pay her bills. She is in the 'top 98 percentile' of her graduating batch. Yeah, it took me some time to figure out why she keeps getting into silly scrapes, but that description helped. There is a hot boyfriend, an even hotter other boyfriend, and assorted murders to solve while chasing bond-breaking minor criminals with slippery talents and dubious histories. Most of the bounty-hunting is a laugh riot. Stephanie Plum gets into crazy scrapes while losing handcuffs and getting painted with all sorts of substances from ketchup to blue dye, leading her mother to despair--worse than her grandmother. Ok, let me unravel that one: her grandmom is madder than she is. Other characters who traipse through all the books are her friends Lula and Connie in the bounty hunting office, her ex-hubby Dickie (well named) and her nemesis Joyce, besides assorted cops. A permanent fixture is the funeral parlor, the grandmom's evening entertainment location of choice. Don't ask. :D

The sitcom is relentless, the dialog, both ordinary and interior dialog in Stephanie's head, crisp and funny. Nay, side-splitting. I actually laugh out loud, and was once in tears, I laughed so much (that was one of the middle books in the series).

Just read them, ok? They're light reading, brainless fast-food entertainment for lazy days. And, yes, the book titles don't have any relation whatsoever to the plot. Ignore the names, except as a way to get the series chronologically ordered.

And, yes, the villains always lose. I like that. :)

(Note: most of the series was available for free on the Laputa app (free download, too) on the Android market).