scmrak's note: Since Janet Evanovich's Seven Up is by, about, and arguably for women, I thought I'd turn the reviewing reins over to a more... qualified? party, someone with a more feminine viewpoint, as it were. Here, without further ado, is the one and only [thank the gods!] Roxie!

Stephanie Plum is back again in Seven Up. Heroine of -- you guessed it -- six previous novels titled in a numeric theme, Stephanie's a New Joisey-based "bail enforcement agent" (that's a bounty hunter to us folks who don't call garbage collectors "sanitation engineers"). She contracts out to Vinnie Plum, a bail bondsman whose clientele consists almost entirely of friends and neighbors (and occasional family) from The Burg, the Italian-Hungarian-American enclave of Trenton where Steph and her cousin Vinnie grew up. That's handy, 'cause it means she doesn't normally have to go after dirtbag drug dealers and kiddie porn distributors. Instead, she'll get sent out to round up a depressed ex-husband who got lit and then crashed his ex-wife's wedding reception to pee all over the wedding cake. That's The Burg's kind of desperate criminal, you know what I mean?

Stephanie's had this job for a couple of years (well, for six books), ever since she lost her job as a lingerie buyer for a chain of discount stores; although she still seems to buy a lot of lingerie... The money's pretty good, and she gets to carry fun toys like a stun gun and handcuffs (the latter could come in handy in the bedroom some day, she keeps thinking). She also gets to work, at least occasionally, with the luscious and mysterious Ranger -- but more on that later.


The Job this Time Around

Cousin Vinnie has handed Stephanie the case of one Eddie DeChooch, a semi-retired neighborhood semi-wise guy who got busted coming into town with half a load of smuggled ciggies. But Eddie didn't show for his court date, so now Steph's hot on his trail. This oughta be easy, she thinks, since Choochy's seventy-something, half-blind, half-deaf, and has a prostate that has him in the can about as often as an expectant mother. Oh, and Stephanie's Grandma Mazur says he couldn't "get it up with a crane" (oooooh! more detail than she ever wanted)! For an old guy, though, DeChooch is pretty darn slippery -- and he's just far enough around the bend that Stephanie's not willing to risk getting her pretty head shot off chasing him through the streets of Trenton.

Matters get a tad more complicated when Dougie the Dealer, one of Stephanie's high-school classmates, disappears; and a strange wild-eyed woman starts taking potshots at their mutual friend Mooner. Since Dougie was Eddie's buyer for the the other half of the stolen cigarettes, said events just might not be coincidence. As the search for Eddie drags on and he continues to slip in and out of Stephanie's sights, it becomes apparent that a lot of rather weird people are looking for some mysterious "thing" that Eddie picked up in Virginia on his smuggling trip. No one's telling what "it" is -- much less where "it" is -- but it looks like the missing "it" is the key to bringing in Eddie DeChooch and finding Dougie. What's a girl to do? Eddie's trail leads through smashed cars (Stephanie regularly goes through at least two vehicles per book), strip joints and mud wrestling, kidnappings, a boatload of crazies, funeral parlors, a couple of dead bodies, retired petty crooks, and a dipsomaniac priest. It's all par for the course in The Burg...


On the Personal Front

Like all good crime fighters (caped crusader or otherwise), Stephanie Plum also has a life outside the job. In this case, that life is truly a walk on the whack-o side. Stephanie, like most female detective novel stars, is completely undomesticated. Her one pet is a hamster named Rex; her apartment is decorated in early Salvation Army; her favorite food is cake; and her 'fridge usually contains only dried-up condiments and a couple of bottles of beer for guests. So she eats most of her meals at fast-food restaurants (pretty soon she'll be Stephanie Watermelon!) and the rest at her parents' house. The old homestead is populated by her peri-menopausal mother (ooops! here comes another hot flash!), her father (who studiously ignores everything that happens except what goes on between his plate and his mouth) and her maternal grandmother. Grandma's the comic interest -- a lascivious old bird whose favorite entertainments are popping the lid on closed-casket funerals and haring after the widowers at the senior center.

This time around the house is more crowded: Stephanie's younger sister Valerie (the perfect one) has returned from California where her husband ran off with the baby sitter, leaving her with two daughters under ten (one of whom thinks she's a horse). Valerie has decided to become a lesbian, and wants Stephanie's help in making the conversion. In truth, Grandma would probably be more useful.

On the romance side, Stephanie's ongoing "thing" with neighborhood cop Joe Morelli is heating up: Morelli's proposed *marriage), although Stepanie's pretty sure he does that every time he wants to get her doin' the nasty. But she's also regularly creaming her jeans at the sight, smell, sound, and touch of the mysterious and dangerous Ranger. If ever a woman was caught between a rock and a hard place, it's Stephanie... Wouldn't you just love troubles like this!?


A Good-Time Girl?

Let's face it, fellow femmes, Stephanie does not necessarily give our gender a good name. She definitely ain't a female Mike Hammer, although she does have her version of the "Woman in Red" in Ranger (a quintessential Man in Black, down to the wraparound shades). She's a gum-chewing bumbler, always loses her handcuffs in her purse, and she lets her hormones lead her around like a teenage boy. Even though this time Stephanie seems mortified at the thought of being made to look foolish by a decrepit old man, the truth is that all the people she chases make her look foolish! She's exactly what the stereotypical ditsy female that some misogynistic creep third-rate newspaper hack/wannabe novelist might invent as a mobster's girlfriend, complete with spike-heeled sandals, a leather miniskirt and a Wonderbra.

And yet she always gets her man. She uses the resources she brings to the job -- her networks of neighborhood gossips, glimpses of lacy cleavage, and an occasional attack of common sense -- to get the job done. And she always seems to get her man the other way, too: not only are she and Morelli hotter than July, it seems to me that she and Ranger are always just about to do the horizontal boogie on the last page of the novel... Mmmm, mmmm!


A Goofy Series

If you haven't read a Stephanie Plum novel, you should bear in mind that these things are to literature what candy corn is to Godiva Chocolate. The characters are stereotyped, and they show the range of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in his last season with the Lakers. But let's be real: especially if you've already read a Stephanie novel, you don't expect much. What you do expect -- and what you get -- is a pretty good time with some goofy characters, silly plot twists, and a protagonist whose self-talk is enough to make an experienced locker-room interviewer blush. She gets lots of high-quality sex (lucky girl!), without being very explicit, and the gore factor is next to nil: a definite plus. Stephanie never blows anyone away -- heck, she keeps her little gun in the cookie jar at home -- and no one gets blown away in technicolor and slow-motion. While Steph occasionally gets knocked around a little, she still guts it out and gets the job done: a good role model, even if her job is a bit non-traditional!

I've read two previous Stephanie Plum Novels, One for the Money and High Five. Evanovich is hard at work on the next one in the series, and I'm fairly certain it won't be titled Eight is Enough. Stephanie will be back again and again (hey - numbers are infinite, but Grafton's Kinsey Milhone can only go to twenty-six letters of the alphabet!) until we get sick of her. There is, by the by, a good chance of doing so: I'd advise not reading too many of these in a row; this is one of those series in which the standard one-year spacing is a good thing!

Recommended, but only barely... Shelve your expectations, and get this one from the library.

Cheers!

Roxie

Closing comment I was quite amused that, when Stephanie dyed her hair blonde, everyone thought she looked like that singer: not Madonna, but Art Garfunkel. Gee, nobody out there looks like Art, right?

Respectfully submitted, scmrak






Recommended: Yes