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HARD EIGHT
by Janet Evanovich
St Martins, June 2002
320 pages
$25.95
ISBN: 0312265859


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Be there a woman mystery fan who has never encountered Janet Evanovich and her heroine, accident prone bounty hunter Stephanie Plum? Probably not. I qualify the mystery fan as a woman because Evanovich wrote at least a dozen romance tales before hitting on the mystery genre in which she incorporates romance, humour and a softish approach to thrillers. She does not, unlike other writers whose work I have read recently, devote thousands of words concentrating in loving detail on torture, trailing entrails and spattered brains. Mind, she does throw in a little detail - her description of a broken nose and its later decoration of the victim's face is, well, horrid - but the reader does not get the feeling that she is really enjoying imagining the carnage in her mind's eye. Evanovich has, not surprisingly, consistently made the New York Times bestseller list with her previous books - One For The Money, Two For The Dough, Three To Get Deadly, Four To Score, High Five, Hot Six and Seven Up - so it is unlikely her horde of loyal followers will desert her most recent offering, Hard Eight.

This adventure, as usual, sees Stephanie grappling with an FTA (failure to appear) miscreant. Martin Paulson, whose purported crime is credit card fraud, outweighs Stephanie considerably and becomes a running gag throughout the book as she attempts to bring him in for her cousin Vinnie, her employer. As usual, Stephanie's co-worker, former harlot Lula, proves a very domitable cohort. Ranger, whom the author has endowed with superhuman powers, constantly rescues Stephanie from awkward situations while cop and sometime lover, Joe Morelli, tries to pry her out of her chosen career and into one of modified domestic bliss.

Stephanie takes on the pro bono task of seeking out the granddaughter and great granddaughter of her mother's neighbour, Mabel. Evelyn has run away with her daughter, Annie, but is constrained by a child custody bond. Mabel has given her house as collateral and stands to lose it should Annie not be available to her father. Stephanie is reluctant to do the work but New Jersey's Burg community is a tight knit one and she is more reluctant not to undertake the task. In so doing she runs up against the employer of Annie's father who takes an inordinate interest in the case and sets someone in a rabbit suit to stalk Stephanie and generally create mayhem.

This author is one of the more predictable and formulaic of the genre but in this book there are differences. First, the similarities, however: Grandma Mazur appears and as usual goes to the funeral parlour to inspect corpses; there is the customary clown figure, in this case a lawyer named Kloughn whose diploma, despite tests he claims to have sat, appears to have come from a mail order company. He it is who attaches himself to Stephanie. Bob the dog, the clown of earlier books, makes only a token appearance. Stephanie herself, as usual, cannot make up her mind between Morelli and Ranger. Another running gag, from book to book, prolonged here is the notion of cars exploding when Stephanie is involved with them. She also has trouble with handcuffs in this episode. The hook from the previous novel is, as usual diffused, but this time not in the first pages of the novel. Another anomaly is that there was no discernible hook in the tail of the narrative.

Yes, there was almost the same quota of humour as is customary in an Evanovich oeuvre, but I felt the author had run out of steam and possibly interest, before the book was done. The character of her sister Valerie, the fallen former perfect role model, was more than a little forced and I simply felt sorry for Valerie's daughter the horse. Perhaps Ms. Evanovich should conjure up another character and begin another series before subjecting her audience to a lack-lustre Nine.

Editoržs Note: This review is based on the Australian edition which was released by Headline on the same day as the US edition. $Au29.95

Reviewed by Denise Wels, June 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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