Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter, born and raised in Trenton New Jersey is back. I seem to remember a TV show that featured Lee Majors as a bounty hunter, but as far as I recall he never had to bring in a naked man greased up in vaseline. This is where we enter Stephanie’s ninth adventure. Yep, Punky Baglog is greased up to the eyebrows and shaking his naked ass at Stephanie and Lula, to, ‘come and get me’.
But that’s just the start, Vinnie Plum, Stephanie’s cousin has posted bail on Samuel Singh, who has disappeared and Vinnie will lose face if Singh does not reappear. So Stephanie is dispatched as Ranger’s assistant to bring Singh in. For those of you not up to speed on the exploits of Stephanie Plum, Ranger is an exciting dude who appears and disappears, and has Stephanie permanently in a two and eight. To complicate matters she is currently back with Cop Joe Morrelli, who has the same effect on her, but for different reasons.
In the course of tracking down Singh, Stephanie, Lula and Connie fetch up in Las Vegas, and meet up with a convention of Elvis impersonators. I will leave that to your imagination.
We again meet up with the usual suspects, not so much of Grandma Mazure in this book, but Lula has decided to become a super model which does involve losing several hundred pounds of fat. She tries a couple of diets but opts for the ‘eat plenty of meat’ diet. She does take it rather literally and tucks into 3 lbs of bacon with a dozen or so eggs for breakfast, and snacks on seven double cheese burgers to keep her strength up until her next meal. She makes me feel sooooo good. When the airport officials confiscate the pork chops in her purse she is not a happy lady.
Valerie is about to give birth and Morrelli’s Grandmother, she of the ’evil eye’ is having visions, none of which bode good for Stephanie, but which she relays to her with great relish.
There are those who say that these later books are not as good as the early
ones, don’t believe it. I laughed so much, and out loud. I confess that I cannot
remember when I last did that, Oh! Yes I can, it was when I was reading Hard
Eight.
----- Lizzie Hayes
Earlier books in the series are One for the Money, Two For the Dough, Three
to Get ready, Four to Score, High Five, Hot Six, Seven Up and Hard Eight.