It's always a treat to go out on a case with Stephanie Plum, the sassy, adventurous, but not always successful Trenton, N.J., bounty hunter. In her seventh outing (after 2000's Hot Six), Stephanie's employer, her bailbondsman cousin, Vinnie, gives her an easy job: pick up vicious senior citizen Eddie DeChooch, who is constantly sighted racing around Trenton in a borrowed white Cadillac, but whom no one can grab. While in Virginia picking up the cigarettes he's charged with smuggling into New Jersey, he stole the heart from the recently dead body of his enemy, Louis DeStephano. The heart's whereabouts define the darkly hilarious trajectory of the plot. The usual characters inhabit the novel: Steph's former high school buddies, the zonked-out Dougie and Mooner; and Evanovich's best creation, feisty Grandma Mazur. Stephanie's much-resented sister Valerie returns from California with her two daughters, her "perfect" marriage ended, and moves in with her parents, to their dismay. Steph and her lover Joe Morelli almost set a wedding date, but again she avoids commitment, still attracted to fellow bounty hunter Ranger. At times the plot meanders: Stephanie and pal Lula spend too much time running from house to house in the inbred Burg neighborhood, while two semi-retired crooks looking for DeChooch keep breaking into her apartment for little reason. All in all this is another zesty Evanovich read, but one that doesn't quite hit the high marks of her last two. (June 19) Forecast: Evanovich has developed a loyal following among mystery fans and her ascendancy to the bestseller lists has introduced her to a large new readership. Despite not being up to her usual standard, this will hit the lists, too, and hard. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

The secret to Stephanie Plum's success is revealed on the very first page: her childhood desire to be an intergalactic princess, wear sexy footgear, and carry a cool weapon. She's done it--not the princess part, but she works for her cousin Vinnie as a bail bondswoman, making enough to pay the rent, catch up to the car payments, and afford those sexy shoes and cool guns. The Burg in Trenton, New Jersey, is full of the characters and low-lifes with whom Stephanie grew up (see "Story behind the Story" on the opposite page); this time Stephanie is trying to bring in one of those neighborhood characters, Eddie DeChooch, for his court date. Choochy is old, nearly blind, and close to incontinent, but he manages to evade Stephanie and his various other pursuers until the very end. Subplots abound: Stephanie's perfect sister, Valerie, comes home with her perfect marriage in tatters; Dougie and Mooner, sweet, befuddled fences, get into horrific trouble; Grandma Mazur discovers the, er . . . good vibrations of a Harley. And our heroine's erotic tango with hunkbar Morelli is complicated not only by the order of a wedding dress but also by the scary and irresistible Ranger, her mentor in bounty hunting, who makes her a bargain she can't refuse. Almost every chapter has a laugh-out-loud moment, but Stephanie has some time to think, too: she knows how complicated the feelings are between her and Morelli, and she knows that Ranger is complicated, too. Even Stephanie's mother gets a real moment. Funny, sexy, scary--how can we wait till next year? --GraceAnne A. DeCandido

When her cousin Vinny, of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, tells Stephanie Plum that her next unwilling subject is DeChooch, who’s skipped to the tune of $50,000, Steph is less than thrilled. Fuhgedaboudit, says New Jersey’s least productive, most seductive bounty hunter: “He’s old, and he kills people, and he’s dating my grandmother.” But no experienced Plum-watcher will take that as definitive. Steph (Hot Six, 2000, etc.), often means yes when she says no—particularly if the question involves money or sex. In this case, the money amounts to five large if she can bag DeChooch. As for sex, enter hunk Trenton detective Joe Morelli and hunk bounty hunter Ranger Manoso, both eager to resume the never-ending battle for Steph’s bodacious body, of which both have made notable conquests. But now there’s a complicating factor. Steph appears to have engaged herself to marry Morelli, though Ranger can be forgiven if he perceives a certain ambiguity in that complex relationship. At any rate, DeChooch proves exactly the handful Steph feared he might. True, he’s got cataracts, and it’s been a while since he actually blew anyone away, but the old lion is nobody’s pussycat. Besides, he has lots of friends and enemies, none of them out to make Steph’s life easier. Though Steph and company try hard, there’s an unsettling sense of the overfamiliar this time—the sense of a long-running series hitting the wall. It’ll do for the army of true-blue fans, but it’s not the one to use as a recruiting tool. Author tour

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum and sidekick Lula get more than they bargained for when they go after a little old man who smuggled cigarettes. In the meantime, Stephanie's love life goes in two wildly different directions. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.