Janet Evanovich
The magnificently incompetent Stephanie Plum returns here for what looks, on the surface, to be an easy pickup for her cousin Vinnie's bail bonding service. In typical mystery fashion, however, there is much more to the story than meets the eye and Stephanie is yet again catapulted far beyond her means into the center of an interesting, if a bit contrived, chain of events and a crime much bigger than a simple friend-to-friend shooting. Evanovich delivers with this second book in the Stephanie Plum series, bringing back many of the lively characters from the first book without resorting to extraordinary measures. The only slightly pushed boundary of character credibility is in the hiring of an old contact, but even this can be ignored because the character in question is too good to pass up. Evanovich can weave an interesting story, but her real strength lies in her humorous and far too real characters and the consistently hilarious voice of her heroine. While characters as bizarre as Stephanie's Grandma Mazur (think Sophia from the Golden Girls) and as stereotyped as Stephanie's parents could easily turn silly or stale, somehow the action is propelled by an underlying sense of reality. The snide comments of Stephanie's arch-enemy no doubt resonate to the victims of middle-aged cattiness everywhere, and Grandma Mazur's portrait is played entirely straight: it is only natural to believe that she is simply going batty in her old age.
These realistic characterizations and Evanovich's accompanying refusal to take her mysteries too seriously make the Stephanie Plum series stand out from the bulk of the genre. Even the mystery at hand is far from run-of-the-mill, and again Evanovich resists the temptation to make Stephanie a hero and keeps her true to (inept) character. Stephanie herself is a lively and engaging narrator and her self-flagellating comments are so in line with readers' thoughts that they never become annoying or seem like cries for undeserved pity. Sure, the novel follows a traditional mystery trajectory, with everything neatly wrapped at the end after one misfortune after another. Evanovich throws enough kinks in the chain to keep the book interesting and the new information fresh and relevant, creating a plot worthy of her steady cast and bringing new corners of her mid-nineties Trenton underworld to light. The scene and players are always interesting, the only thing out of place a slightly gory trend that is far too gruesome for such a lighthearted style. This too, however, seems to fall into place as even Stephanie cannot weather the storm without losing some poise in the process. Overall, Two for the Dough is an excellent continuation of a very good thing, an enjoyable genre book that I could not help but like despite its conventions and which leaves me eager to experience more of Stephanie's misadventures as an ineffective yet charming bounty hunter.
Grade: A-
These realistic characterizations and Evanovich's accompanying refusal to take her mysteries too seriously make the Stephanie Plum series stand out from the bulk of the genre. Even the mystery at hand is far from run-of-the-mill, and again Evanovich resists the temptation to make Stephanie a hero and keeps her true to (inept) character. Stephanie herself is a lively and engaging narrator and her self-flagellating comments are so in line with readers' thoughts that they never become annoying or seem like cries for undeserved pity. Sure, the novel follows a traditional mystery trajectory, with everything neatly wrapped at the end after one misfortune after another. Evanovich throws enough kinks in the chain to keep the book interesting and the new information fresh and relevant, creating a plot worthy of her steady cast and bringing new corners of her mid-nineties Trenton underworld to light. The scene and players are always interesting, the only thing out of place a slightly gory trend that is far too gruesome for such a lighthearted style. This too, however, seems to fall into place as even Stephanie cannot weather the storm without losing some poise in the process. Overall, Two for the Dough is an excellent continuation of a very good thing, an enjoyable genre book that I could not help but like despite its conventions and which leaves me eager to experience more of Stephanie's misadventures as an ineffective yet charming bounty hunter.
Grade: A-
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