EricCWelch

Probably, [getting shot at is] like driving the turnpike. Probably you get used to it. The way I see it, living in New Jersey is a challenge, what with the toxic waste and the eighteenwheelers and the armed schizophrenics. I mean what’s one more lunatic shooting at you.” That about sums up the attitude of Stephanie Plum, laid-off cheap lingerie buyer for a department store chain. She’s the creation of Janet Evanovich in One for the Money, whose books are a delight. In desperation, Stephanie takes a job working for her cousin Vinnie — having another dinner at her mother’s is less preferable than running a needle through her eye — as a recovery agent, i.e., bounty hunter. She thinks it will be easy to find Joe Morelli, an old grade school chum who initiated her into the game of tunnel (he was the train) in their garage during the sixth grade. Soon she’s finding him all over the place — or rather he keeps showing up, often bailing her out of difficult circumstances — but she can’t seem to figure out how to get him in so she can collect the substantial fee for his return. In the meantime, her grandmother, while ogling Stephanie’s .38, blows away the hind end of a chicken at the dinner table while entertaining a young man Stephanie’s mother wants her to date. Beginning to get the picture? Some sample dialogue: “ ‘You seen Shirley lately?’ Connie asked, ‘She’s big as a horse. Must have gained a hundred pounds since high school. Saw her at Marge Manusco’s shower. She took up three folding chairs when she sat down, and she had her pocketbook filled with Ding-Dongs. I guess they were for an emergency. . . like in case someone beat her to the potato salad.’ ‘Shirely Gallo? Fat? She was a rail in high school.’ ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways.’ Connie said.”