Joe Morelli | Seattle Book Mama

Split Second: Thirty-two Switcheroo is the latest installment in the iconic and generally hilarious Stephanie Plum mystery series. For the uninitiated, Stephanie is a bounty hunter. Her cousin Vinnie runs a bail bond business; Stephanie’s job begins when they fail to turn up in court. It’s her job, and that of her close friend and side kick Lula, to hunt them down and bring them in. She works on commission, so to speak, and so she’s motivated, though not always skillful. Here’s a sample of Evanovich’s prose that describes Vinnie:

“The back door to the office crashed open and Vinnie walked in. Vinnie is the human equivalent of a ferret in a sharkskin suit with tight pants and pointy-toes shoes. His hair is black and slicked back. He cheats at cards. He cheats on his wife…He’s a boil on the backside of my family, but his skill as a bail bondsman is unquestionable. His father-in-law, Harry the Hammer, owns the bail bonds agency, and he also owns Vinnie.”

My thanks go to NetGalley and Atria Books for the review copy. This book will be available to the public on Tuesday, November 10.

For as long as the series has existed, Stephanie has been in her current position, and when she gets in over her head, she calls one of the two men in her life for help. Joe Morelli is a cop; Ranger, whose actual name nobody knows, runs a security firm. And for the first 30 books, she has vacillated between one man and the other romantically. Sometimes that’s great fun, but of late, most reviewers have found it to be monotonous. This reader has read all of those books except for #31, which turns out to be a bad one to have missed, as Stephanie has finally chosen between them. This book begins with her married to Joe Morelli, but it isn’t going well. She’s not domestic; the Italian elders in his family have huge expectations that she’s not meeting.

But her work is heating up, and she’s tasked with bringing in a couple of guys that are seriously scary. They’re both worth solid amounts of money if she can carry it off, and she needs money, and so this book is primarily about her pursuit of Ziggy Zucker and Greb Tuti, as well as her extra job moonlighting for Ranger as a bodyguard for the child of a wealthy customer. The kiddo gets kidnapped, and so now she’s scrambling to rescue Mia as well.

This book cheers me in that it retains the series’ humor while also breaking the log jam, at least to an extent. I won’t spoil it for you by being specific, but Stephanie does something more serious than she’s previously done in her work, and it clicks perfectly. I love this series, and as long as Evanovich writes it, I’ll read it. If you haven’t read the others, you can hop in here without becoming confused, but it will make you want to round up the rest right away! Highly recommended.

Stephanie Plum has been my constant companion for decades, but she never seems to get any older. We should all be so lucky!

My thanks go to Net Galley and Atria Books for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

Stephanie is a bounty hunter, working for her cousin Vinnie’s bail bond service. She tracks down no-shows, takes them to have their hearings rescheduled, and collects a commission. Her mother wishes fervently that she would get a normal job such as a bank teller, or just go ahead and marry long-time boyfriend Officer Joe Morelli, and keep house and raise kiddies. But Stephanie is long on independence, and she’s short on marketable skills, and so this is what she does. And we readers are well aware that she wouldn’t be half this hilarious as a housewife, so we cheer her on.

In an interview, author Evanovich said she had lit on the idea of a bounty hunter protagonist because the writer doesn’t need a background in legal matters the way that she would if she used a cop, detective, or lawyer. The primary skill required of a bail bonds enforcer is lying, and she felt she had a good grasp of that one.

You gotta love it.

There have been a few wobbles in the series, and a moment (long ago) when I thought perhaps it was played out. But like her intrepid protagonist, the author rallied and came back stronger than ever.

Can you read this book if you haven’t read any of the others in the series? Yes. Yes, you surely can; but you are most likely going to want to go back for the rest once you do so.

There are a few things that strike me as I read this one. I suddenly find myself wondering why Stephanie doesn’t seem to have women friends. She’s lived in Trenton—in the Burg—her entire life, so shouldn’t she have a few lifelong pals? But by the end of the story, I realized that her work buds are her go-to girls. Lula gets into a scrape and leaves what little she has to Stephanie (but of course, Lula pulls through. I don’t feel like this is a spoiler; since when would a riotously funny writer like Evanovich off a main character?) Connie is a distant relative, but she’s also a friend.

I also find myself, like other reviewers, wondering about the sanitized language and decreasing vocabulary levels. We’ve been drifting in this direction for awhile. At the start of the series, profanity was used by the people and in the situations where you’d expect to find it. The overall language level was accessible to anybody that finished eighth grade. Over the last several episodes, however, it’s been drifting downward. Now, apart from one “damn”, I found nothing, although the euphemisms are stellar (“What the fork,” “What the Hellman’s Mayonnaise,” “Son of a bagel.”) And the overall vocabulary level is now down to about fifth grade. If it goes any lower (see the author’s other series,) I may not be interested anymore, but as it stands, it’s fast, it’s snappy, and I’m in.

The usual elements—escorting Grandma Mazur to viewings at the mortuary; exploding cars; men surprising Stephanie when they let themselves into her locked apartment; dinner with Stephanie’s parents; a geeky witness, or victim, or possibly even an offender, that Stephanie takes under her wing; and the red-hot Joe Morelli are all present and accounted for. Stephanie’s mother has been drinking heavily every time Stephanie gets into a dangerous scrape, and Evanovich has been toying with some character development in her direction. I hope she follows through.

The tension of Stephanie trying to decide between Morelli and the mysterious Ranger is over, for now, at least, and it was getting old, so I applaud this development. She knows that Ranger will never marry her, and there’s a lot he’ll never tell her. She knows Morelli. They grew up together, and they understand one another. Marriage, maybe not yet; but Joe is the one. She’s tempted by others in this installment, but for once, she behaves herself. Good.

Whereas this series isn’t the magnificent literary accomplishment attained by some mystery Grand Masters, and it doesn’t try to be, I rate it as five stars in the humor genre. It made me laugh out loud on page two, and though I read quite a lot of books each year, those that have made me howl this year can be counted on one hand. It’s a more valuable characteristic than some might guess, especially during these tense times.

Highly recommended to those that need a good laugh.