Book 41: Four to Score

Four to Score
Janet Evanovich

Trenton, NJ, beware. Stephanie Plum is back and is hot on the trail of a car thief intent on revenge against her slimy ex-beau. Despite the fact that Three to Get Deadly is a relative disappointment and that this is the fourth book in a series, Evanovich keeps Stephanie and her cases fresh and refuses to become too formulaic in a genre that thrives on convention. Sure, the key elements are in place: readers know by now that Stephanie is on a near-impossible case that will somehow turn out to be bigger than it appears and which will be happily resolved after some creative bungling by Trenton's favorite female bounty hunter. That's why we read the books, which are a delight and which make the innovation between installments even more fresh and interesting. Four to Score builds on the Trenton we know and love while introducing a few new and fully rounded characters. Evanovich excels at characterization; hardly any characters fit basic stereotypes and even when they do they have interesting backstory or can function on their own as realistic representations of familiar faces. There is only one consistently disappointing relationship and even that is handled well enough to not clash terribly with the less stereotypical parts of the book. Evanovich's ability to draw intriguing and realistic portraits carries this book as the FTA develops a personality all her own and leads Stephanie on a unique wild-goose chase that is as happily aggravating for readers as it must be for Stephanie. Evanovich comes back from a one-book slump with Stephanie's humor in full force, delivering the rapid and consistently hilarious narration and dialogue readers have come to know and love through the series, recycling old characters in inventive and exciting ways and elaborating on Trenton without anything seeming too convenient or to unfairly stretch the bounds of reality. A sense of reality permeates Stephanie's adventures and her gradual growth and lingering incompetence combine with Evanovich's excellent senses of setting and speech to create a fun and inventive mystery that should delight fans of both Stephanie Plum and the mystery genre as a whole. Four to Score is a return to top form for Evanovich and shouldn't be missed in this wonderful series.

Grade: A-