Every now and then, a girl’s gotta laugh. When I’m that girl, and need a rib-tickling belly laugh, Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series delivers yuckles and chuckles like nothing else.
The protagonist, Stephanie Plum, is a laid off lingerie buyer from Jersey turned bond enforcement agent. She’s not very good at the job, and whenever she teams up with her big, bold and beautiful co-worker Lula (a former streetwalker), things go from bad to worse.
Other series regulars appear in Finger Lickin’ Fifteen: Stephanie’s hamster Rex, her two love interests Joseph Morelli and Ranger, her parents and Grandma Mazur, co-workers Vinnie and Connie, nemesis Joyce Barnhart, and Bob the dog.
In Finger Lickin’ Fifteen, Lula teams up with Grandma Mazur to create what they think will be prize winning barbeque. Instead, they’re an instant fire hazard whenever they get near a grill, and their recipe’s effect on diners is similar to Montezuma’s revenge. In the course of the novel, Stephanie and Lula once again blow up several vehicles. In previous books, most of the destroyed cars belong to Stephanie, but Fifteen throws in a new twist. One torched car belongs to Lula and most of the rest, to Ranger.
If you’re looking for something to make you quit worrying about terrorists carrying bombs onto airplanes, global warming, and what in the world you should fix for supper tonight, Finger Lickin’ Fifteen could do the trick. But you might want to start with the first book in the series, One for the Money, and work your way to Fifteen. But skip the more recently created auxiliary Plum novels. They don’t measure up to the original series, which means that since the original fifteen books are hilarious drivel, but drivel nonetheless, the recent tag-alongs are really low life lit.
You might also want to listen to the audio renditions. (Note: not a good idea if you have kids listening in.) The actors who read them are fantastic and bring the characters to life. But never, never expect symbolism or deeper meanings in the Stephanie Plum books. Former lingerie buyers deliver laughs, not meaning. Some days, that’s about all Stephanie and I can handle.
