Finger Lickin' Fifteen

May 25, 2009
Bestseller Evanovich recycles tired themes better executed in earlier adventures in her latest Stephanie Plum adventure (Fearless Fourteen
, etc.). When Lula inadvertently witnesses the beheading of culinary TV star Stanley Chipotle in a Trenton, N.J., alley, Stephanie's on-again off-again boyfriend, cop Joe Morelli, reluctantly takes the case. Lula, with the help of Grandma Mazur, enters the same barbequing competition Chipotle was in town to promote, hoping to lure the murderers out of hiding. Meanwhile, Ranger has recruited Stephanie to help solve a series of break-ins at properties under the protection of Rangeman Security. The inevitable sparks fly between Stephanie and Ranger, with Morelli grumbling on the sidelines. Evanovich dishes up her usual mixture of shoot-'em-up action (numerous cars explode) and quirky characters (notably a neighborhood flasher with a devoted following), but the lackluster plot will disappoint fans.

June 15, 2009
Stephanie Plum chases killers, burglars and romance—well, not romance this time—through the flames that threaten every square inch of Trenton.

It's not as if there weren't enough work for the bounty hunters of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, dedicated professionals charged with bringing in Failures to Appear like serial flasher Junior Turley, who's known to every housewife in his neighborhood, and retired pharmacist Myron Kaplan, who robbed his dentist at gunpoint when his new choppers began to ache. They really don't need the two unrelated cases that pop up like mushrooms. Stephanie's pal Lula arrives at work one evening to report that she just saw a man getting beheaded outside the Sunshine Hotel, and smoldering Ranger, the bounty hunter who's long lusted after Stephanie, reveals that clients using his security systems are getting robbed left and right. Stephanie would turn to her main squeeze, Det. Joe Morelli, if an argument about peanut butter hadn't sent them skittering to opposite corners. Looks like she and Lula will be on their own as they go after the $1 million reward offered by Fire in the Hole Red Hot Barbecue Sauce for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the parties Lula watched decapitate celebrity chef Stanley Chipotle. To get in the mood, Lula naturally takes up barbecuing, and soon, as Stephanie says,"I'd been involved in so many fires in the past week I'd lost count"—and that's with two more still to come.

Don't get too invested in figuring out the crime wave that motivates a parade of transvestite jokes, diarrhea jokes and fart jokes, because Evanovich (Fearless Fourteen, 2008, etc.) certainly doesn't.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 27, 2009
Veteran Evanovich narrator Lorelei King seems perfectly at home when in command of bounty hunter Stephanie Plum and her colorful Garden State band of relatives and colleagues. The action here centers on the mysterious death of a prominent cable television barbecue master. As a witness to the crime, Plum's larger than life office assistant Lula lands in the center of the drama, and King delivers a deliciously over the top performance of her antics, especially the reformed prostitute's convoluted plot to solve the case by entering a barbecue cook-off. The abridgment seems a bit choppy, as the details surrounding the motives and methods of the cast of villains seem lost in the shuffle. Yet King's talent and Evanovich's beloved characters still make for an entertaining summer escape. A St. Martin's hardcover (Reviews, May 25).