Review: Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
A keeper? Sure
Ten years ago (book time), four guys robbed a bank in Trenton, New Jersey. Only one of them was arrested, and the money never turned up. Now Dom Rizzi is out of jail, mad at the world, and determined to get his share of the loot. He thinks it’s in his Aunt Rose’s house, or at least that a clue to finding the money is there. But Aunt Rose is dead, and who inherited her house? His rotten cousin Joe Morelli the cop, that’s who.
Worse yet, his nephew Zook (well, technically, his name’s Mario Rizzi, but what kind of name is that for a serious online gamer?) is living with Morelli because Zook’s mother Loretta is in jail and Morelli’s sometime girlfriend Stephanie Plum the bounty hunter promised Loretta that she’d make sure Zook had someplace to stay.
Are you confused yet? Just relax and enjoy the ride. Summarizing the plot of a Stephanie Plum story is worse than a waste of time; it’s a short route to head-spinning befuddlement. What we have here is fast-moving farce with cops and robbers and miscellaneous other offenders who didn’t get out of jail free. Instead they had to post bond, with a little help from Stephanie’s boss who advanced the money. And when they don’t show up for their court date, it’s Steph’s job to locate them and bring them back to the police. She’s not very good at it. But somehow, she gets by.
A word of warning for those who object to raunchy language: these are not the books for you. You won’t find really explicit scenes, but there are incidents like the elderly man Stephanie has to track down who doesn’t like to wear pants. So she ends up spreading newspaper on the back seat of her car and taking him to the cop shop bottomless. And Steph can’t make up her mind between Morelli (totally hot, probably husband-and-father material, but as bullheaded as she is) and Ranger (even hotter, dangerous, mysterious, absolutely not husband material, and inexplicably fond of her).
There’s a large cast of characters who have accumulated over the course of the series – each book has a numbered title – and many of the regulars show up in Fearless Fourteen. (Including Stephanie’s friend Lula the retired ho’, who has decided to get engaged to her boyfriend Tank, whether he knows it or not.) This one actually has a more coherent story than some of the Plum books, since there’s an ongoing theme of trying to find the other three bank robbers and the money, and rescue Zook’s mother Loretta (who gets kidnapped by the robbers), and keep Zook from spraypainting Morelli’s entire neighborhood…. But there are more than enough detours, one-shot self-contained scenes, plots that start out separate and get entangled in the robbery story, and general chaos to keep you from focusing on anything too hard.
A Number of Things 