Steph Dodges a Bullet - and Other Stuff - for Top Secret Twenty-One

Top Secret Twenty-One - Janet Evanovich

She’s up to twenty-one now, and she’s still a ditz – but she’s a ditz who somehow manages to get results. She’s Trenton’s favorite bond recovery agent, the one and only Stephanie Plum. If she’s coming for you, you’d better watch out (and put your clothes back on…)

The skip of the week is sleazeball car dealer Jimmy Poletti, charged with “importing underage girls from Mexico” (no further details available – after all, this isn’t a courtroom drama). Poletti’s former bookkeeper (maybe I should say “bookcooker”?), little person Randy Briggs has attached himself to Steph for some reason, all three feet-zero of him. Poletti’s in the wind, but his poker-playing buddies keep turning up leaking blood from numerous holes and things around Briggs keep exploding. Weird, huh?

Meanwhile, Ranger’s business is on high alert as a one-eyed Russian mercenary, with whom Carlos Manoso has a messy history, is in town looking for revenge. Even as Steph and her crew forage through the wilds of Stark Street looking for Poletti and a few other FTAs, the cyclops is out there with a sharp knife and some deadly goodies. But never fear: Stephanie Plum always gets her man… whether it’s Ranger or Morelli!

The twenty-first in Janet Evanovich’s by the numbers series, Top Secret Twenty-One follows a well-worn path. Anyone whose read more than a handful of the series can predict that certain events will occur somewhere within the pages of Plum’s latest adventure:

• At least one car will explode (two, in fact, though one’s collateral damage)
• Another car will be totaled without an explosion
• Ranger will utter the word "Babe" at least ten times, with a different meaning each time
• Grandma Mazur will visit at least three funerals (four this time, I think)
• Steph will vacillate between Morelli's and Ranger's beds (this time it’s Joe's)
• Steph and Lula will deliver at least one fugitive to the police in his birthday suit; and he'll be either hugely fat or skinny as a rail
• Lula will wear at least one scandalously short Spandex® skirt in a color not found in nature

Katherine Heigl as Steph in "One for the Money" (2012)

The Plum series is like a comfortable shoe: you know it’s not gonna pinch your toes or tax your reading skills, and that our Miss Plum will come out the other end unscathed. She won’t gain an ounce from all those bacon-burgers (no Tastykakes this time?) and Mother Plum’s chocolate cake, she’ll be driving yet another used car, Ranger will take care of her no matter what, and her “doo-dah” will be lavished plenty of attention by whichever of her male companions. Maybe the action is a little different this time, as Evanovich (mother and daughter) have to dig deep in the plot barrel to come up with a premise; but she (they?) manage to make it work. 

It’s nothing special and the series is getting pretty predictable, so… three stars (pretty much average).