One for the Money

AUTHOR: Janet Evanovich
PUBLISHED: 1994
GENRE: Mystery

This is, as you may know, the first of the Stephanie Plum novels, a line of books which has become enormously successful, successful enough to warrent Katherine Hagel's participation in the movie.*  I actually read this book once before, a long time ago, during a summer internship at Merrill Lynch, which was less an internship and more 8 weeks of me staring at the wall and waiting for my supervisor to get back from "physical therapy".**  To make a long story short, the books were given to me by two secretaries who had taken upon themselves to give me an all-over makeover, although it really ended with the books and a trip to the Quakerbridge Mall Macy's make-up counter.***  Not that any of this matters, as I did not remember the story in the least.

The basic premise is fairly well-known at this point: Plum, down on her luck, goes to work for Cousin Vinny as the most inept bounty hunter that ever existed, tracking down various low-lifes and drunkards while fending off her mother's attempts to feed her and get her a job at the button factory.  The stories are set in Hamilton and Trenton, not too far from your fair blogger, and thus hold a certain charm for we Central Jerseyites who are tired of Newark getting all the glory, or at least all the press.  The stories (at least the first one) teeters between aw-shucks everyman-ness and complete absurdity, the hallmark of an author who has been told to keep her characters relatable but really likes writing action. 

For most of the book, Plum is actively pursued by a crazed boxer who is known for raping and torturing women.  This guy knows where she lives.  He knows she lives alone.  He knows that she has had her phone turned off and, it being 1994, she has no cell phone.  And yet she stays there alone, and goes for unaccompanied runs, and continues to obviously patrol his neighborhood with no back-up.  She is grabbed by him at least 3 times, and is only able to squirm her way out of the situation at the last second.  Her actions just don't make sense, and Evanovich treats the very real danger her character is in with a somewhat disturbing lightness.  Her car blows up with someone inside and it's all jokes about missing eyebrows. 
But this isn't supposed to be super-accurate.  It's supposed to be fun, and for most of the time, it is.  It got a few chuckles out of me.  Maybe as she went along (goes along, really, considering she's still pumping these babies out), Evanovich fine-tuned her writing.  Probably not.  But it's worth giving it a try anyway.
LENGTH: 290 quick pages
MAINSTREAM OR NOT: Katherine Hagel, man!
SO, SHOULD I READ IT OR NOT: Yeah, sure.  Just know that there are about 57 more to follow.
*I do not like Katherine Hagel.  She has what can clinically be termed a bitch face, which is not to say she is a bitch, but rather that she always looks like she just smelled something disgusting.  She is one of the many actors whose work I catagorically avoid.  In case you're wondering, the list also includes Jennifer Aniston, Adam Sandler, and Tom Cruise, among others.

**A week before I started, the other intern, a frat boy named Rob who listened to a lot of Dave Matthews Band, was driving our supervisor back from lunch, gravely mistimed the left-turn signal off Scudders Mill Road, and got them in an accident.  I use quotes when I say "physical therapy",  however, because the sessions generally coincided particularly well with tee times and liquid lunches.

***A trip during which we met Corky from "Life Goes On", but that's a whole other story.