Twelve Sharp: Further Adventures in the Burg

By Breanne Boland July 13, 2006 Issue

I don’t watch a lot of TV, so for my fix of episodic entertainment, I turn to Stephanie Plum. She and her creator Janet Evanovich are the most reliable providers I know. I don’t need sitcoms; I just want the proud Jersey girl and her usual gang of misfits and her constant missteps and exploding cars. Is it any less formulaic than any consistent TV comedy? Maybe not, but the formula works. Comfort food doesn’t deviate from the recipe; neither does this series, and that’s fine with me.

This time around, Stephanie is still working as a bounty hunter, which she thought would be a temporary gig, but 12 books later, she’s still doing it — or trying, at least. She’s quit a few times, sure, but she always comes back. She deals with the usual ineptitude (her own and that of the criminals she needs to capture), and the usual gang of misfits — both the ones she works with and the ones she’s trying to arrest. She still partners with Lula, the sassy ex-prostitute with a penchant for theatrics and stun-guns, and she’s still the center of a love triangle involving her occasional boyfriend Morelli and Ranger, the enigmatic bounty hunter who seems to spend a good amount of his time rescuing Stephanie from the jams she inevitably gets herself into.

Ranger goes into hiding after being wanted by the cops and the feds, but has to emerge when a Ranger imposter, who’s attracted much attention from the authorities, kidnaps his daughter. In FakeRanger’s wake is a plethora of problems: a woman who claims to be Ranger’s wife shows up in Trenton, declaring that Stephanie is the other woman in her marriage and that she intends to remove her from the equation. And once Stephanie gets that straightened out, she still has to deal with Ranger’s double, who has decided she’s the missing piece to his assuming the identity of the eastern seaboard’s greatest bounty hunter.

And during all of this, there’s the usual cast of characters from cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds office. Lula, the stun-gun-toting, spandex-wearing ex-prostitute, has decided to form a band with transvestite Sally Sweet, and Grandma Mazur decides she too has musical leanings. Stephanie’s apprehensions require pep talks and self-esteem bolstering as well as handcuffs. And during all of this, both sometime-boyfriend Morelli and the always-sexual temptation Ranger move into Stephanie’s one-bedroom apartment. It’s business as usual in the Burg – that is, Stephanie by turns bungles and miraculously succeeds, donuts are devoured, and pot roast dinners at Mom’s house are held every Friday.

Usually it’s an insult to call something predictable, but in the case of Twelve Sharp, it’s reassuring. The formula has held together for one more book. Will Evanovich be able to sustain a love triangle for much longer? Probably not, but the book concedes this. However, it’s great fun for now – Stephanie in all of her lusty, hedonistic glory, still hilarious and gloriously imperfect. Many books featuring heroines in their late 20’s or early 30’s — pretty girls with a penchant for screwing up — have the problem of a detestable doofus in the starring role. The botches that are supposed to make for high comedy instead make the heroine look dim and clumsy. While Stephanie certainly has her share of calamity – exploding cars, burning apartments, and marauding grandmothers, anyone? – she remains genuinely likable. She may be a catastrophe magnet, but she seems like she’d be fabulous to spend a Friday night with, as long as you drove.

With each new book in this series, I’m afraid it will be the one where Stephanie Plum turns into inadvertent parody. It’s the risk of a long-running series, but so far Evanovich has side-stepped it, and we’re left with another funny, occasionally sexy, and sometimes scary entry in the Stephanie Plum story. Which, if we’re counting, has to make her one of the luckiest and unluckiest people in history, or at least the history of New Jersey. What other woman has been kidnapped, threatened, stalked, and generally endangered so much while still staying alive and, apparently, without any lasting mental harm? Still, even as resilient as she is, the last book of this series will probably see her packing up her clothes and her hamster and heading to Montana to live in a shack surrounded by high, electrified fences.

But for now she’s getting along like always — chasing down bad guys both benign (the odd pervert) and frightening (a gun-toting arsonist), weighing the options of the men in her life, fending off Jersey-girl-gone-wrong Joyce Barnhardt, and hitting the Cluck-in-a-Bucket with Lula. Stephanie Plum may be one of the worst bounty hunters in existence, but her books are still one of the most reliably funny and enjoyable series out there.

Twelve Sharp, 320 pages, St. Martin’s Press, available at libraries and bookstores.

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