Saralee Says
In this time of layoffs and downsizing, many folks are changing careers. One day Stephanie Plum has a secure job as a discount lingerie buyer for E.E. Martin, owns season tickets to the Rangers, and drives a sporty Miata. Within a matter of months she has lost her job, and as we meet her she is selling her furniture, hocking her stereo system, and having a car repossessed. What’s a girl to do?
Janet Evanovich has developed a series of 10 books including One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, Four To Score, High Five, Hot Six, Seven Up, Hard Eight, Full House and the most recent Visions of Sugar Plums based on Stephanie’s choice of a new career.
One for the Money (Harper Collins) is first in this series, and the premise is about Stephanie Plum’s trials and tribulations in her new vocation. Plum does not choose to go back to school or work as a temp when she is laid off as a discount lingerie buyer; instead she makes a complete 180-degree turn in her professional life and becomes a bounty hunter for her cousin. Imagine what would have happened to the Mary Richards character in the Mary Tyler Moore Show if she had gone to work as a bounty hunter instead of as a television producer.
Author Evanovich has created a character, which is sort of an urban Kinsey Millhone, the heroine of the Sue Grafton series. Plum lives in New Jersey, and has a hysterically funny dysfunctional family who conveniently lives right around the corner. She is also divorced, and her family is always trying to fix her up with men she does not find attractive. The most sympathetic person in her quest to be a bounty hunter is her grandmother who wears spandex and experiments with anything she can find in Plum’s purse including guns.
How realistic is it that a young woman with no training succeeds as a bounty hunter? Plum does not even know how to hold a gun, much less hide it in her purse. Is this a good role model for young women? In this day of equal opportunity I think women have the same rights as men to select any career they want, even if it means using guns. I just wish the women would have enough sense to get the proper training for firearms.
How does Evanovich compare with other people who write mystery/suspense series? Do you think she is as good or better than Jan Burke, Sue Grafton, Robert Parker, Stephen White, James Lee Burke or John D. McDonald? I think she is somewhere in the middle. Will you read another Stephanie Plum book after reading One for the Money, or is this first book enough for you? Do you want to know what is next for Stephanie? I do. It is not often that a writer can make me laugh out loud and still keep me entertained with a good whodunit story. Evanovich managed to do both for me, so I will definitely read more of her books.
Larry’s Language
The success and popularity of some authors and their books often surprises me, and Janet Evanovich’s crime series staring Stephanie Plum is one example. Evanovich’s 10 books about Plum, a gritty blue-collar feminine bounty hunter “of good Hungarian peasant stock” have sold millions of copies and consistently placed on The New York Times’ best-seller list since their beginning in 1994 with One for the Money.
Most of these books have the same theme. Can a mild-mannered, klutzy, “not dainty” woman who is just trying to make her way in life, earn a few bucks from a bail bond company catching criminal defendants who fail to appear in court? In each book there is also tension about Plum balancing her interest in a fellow bounty hunter known as Ranger and her interest in a local cop, Joe Morelli.
In One for the Money, Plum is broke. So broke that she is selling her furniture for cash, her car is repossessed, and she is not only out of work, but she is also reduced to eating meals with her parents and grandmother who want to set her up with eligible men. This makes it easy to understand why she is highly motivated to take a job with her relative who runs a bail bond company.
Her first assignment is to capture Joe Morelli who has shot and killed an unarmed man and has failed to appear in court. It is a “ketchup on my meatloaf” kind of life, full of characters named Ziggy, Sal, Vinnie and Benito. Her very cheap new car is vandalized, and she is assaulted by a world-champion boxer. Plum stumbles to success rather than earning it. Things happen to her rather than her creating events. She lacks attitude.
This is a woman who has to be told what to do, rather than figuring it out for herself and, for example, when she finally decides that a bounty hunter needs a gun, Plum spends more time dropping the gun than using it. When her car is painted with graffiti, it never seems to occur to her that perhaps she should paint over it so that she can sneak up on the desperadoes. When she is threatened and assaulted, she hesitates about calling the police. This character really aggravated me.
This is light entertainment. While author Evanovich can write far better than I can, there is no dialogue and no style that you will remember after you finish this book. Neither is there much mystery or suspense since the good guys are very obvious and easy to recognize. I had to start this book twice and make myself finish it. If you identify with Stephanie Plum — a sincere, mostly trustworthy and loyal character — then you will love these books. On the other hand, if Plum seems foolish and impressionable, there is not enough substance in these books to sustain your interest.
Our next book club discussion will feature The Children by David Halberstam.
