Book Review: Fearless Fourteen

I just love the Stephanie Plum number series by Janet Evanovich. I am always waiting with great anticipation for the next one to come out. Ms. Evanovich works pretty quickly so I usually don’t have to wait that long. The series is up to 14 for the regular series, and she also puts out some between the numbers books as well to tie her fans over until the next number series book comes out. Fearless Fourteen is the newest book in the series, and I had it on Pre-order and waited for it to arrive as soon as it was released.

Background

Since this is a series a little back ground may be necessary for those who are unfamiliar with the series.
Plum is a female bounty hunter. She is single, but has two men in her life that she loves, Joe Morreilli her long term on again off again boyfriend who is a Trenton, NJ police detective; and Ranger who is a hot Latino bounty hunter who is now moving on to bigger and better things, he was Stephanie’s mentor.

Stephanie works for her cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds office and is often assisted by Lula, who started off in the office as a file clerk after retiring from being a Ho. She started assisting Stephanie several books back and now she is beginning to be more of a bounty hunter than file clerk. Connie also works at the bonds office and hands out the cases.

You also normally get a glimpse of Stephanie’s family. Most fans of the series just love Stephanie’s Grandmother who is sassy and adventurous and she provides a lot of comic relief in the story lines.
The series is a combination of humor and mystery.

Fearless Fourteen

Stephanie’s latest FTA (failure to appear) is sort of a relative of Joe Morrelli. Loretta has been really down on her luck financially and is a single mom. Stephanie promises her that if she goes in and gets rebounded she will pick her son Zook up from school and keep him until she gets out. Little does she know that might be a little longer than they thought.

Since things are slow at the bonds office Stephanie takes on a little part time work working for Ranger protecting a still hot pop star in her 60’s named Brenda. Later Brenda wants to join Lula and Stephanie on their bounty hunting missions and create a reality show.

Also it has been rumored that are millions of dollars from a robbery hidden by Joe Morreli’s aunt before she passed away. The rumors are that the money is located somewhere in Joe’s basement.

Loretta’s brother (the FTA above) is involved with a couple of other guys who are trying to recover that money. When Loretta is released her brother’s partners kidnap Loretta and threaten her brother, and Stephanie that if they do not get him the money he will start removing limbs from Loretta. Of course since Loretta has been kidnapped Stephanie and Morelli must continue to take care of Zook while all of this is going on.

So Stephanie must figure out how to save Loretta, while watching her son, and having television cameras following her and LuLa around.

My Thoughts

I like this series because there is always a lot of silly humor going on while Stephanie is trying to accomplish her goals. Fearless Fourteen is quite funny so it does not disappoint on that level.

The story line is not all that great, as Stephanie does not spend a lot of time chasing the mystery. In this book the mystery comes to her. I can’t really pin point it but the story just seemed kind of flat. Sure there was an attempt to throw more in to the story by throwing the Brenda character in the mix, but Brenda was more goofy and comical than she was interesting. The book was OK and had I not been a long time fan who knew that she could do better I might have accepted it for a funny little mystery. However, there have been a few books in the series that were just amazing, with a really enthralling story line, and were even a bit on the scary side. This one just did not reach the potential I know that Ms. Evanovich is capable of. It just seems like the emphasis on this book was more on being funny than it was on the story line.

That being said if you are just looking for a fun book to read, with lots of silly characters and humor this one will definitely fit the mold. It was entertaining, and as a fan of the series I soaked it up, but I there have been much better books in the series, so I was just a tad bit disappointed. I do recommend Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich, but it was not my favorite in the series by far.

Note: There is an interesting thing happening with LuLa and her boyfriend Tank, that I am looking forward to seeing what happens there.