Hot Six

Sexy, smart-talking New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum returns for her sixth wildly amusing mystery (after 1999's High Five). Determination and contacts (she's grown up with half the cops and crooks in Trenton) compensate for Steph's poor aim with a gun, bad luck with cars and soft-hearted approach to her job (one bail jumper evades her four times). The police are after her mentor, the mysterious Ranger, wanted for killing drug and gun dealer Homer Ramos. Claiming he's innocent, Ranger persuades Steph to help him keep an eye on the Ramos clan. Steph teams up with her lover, vice cop Joe Morelli, then strikes out on her own when she realizes neither Joe nor Ranger will share information with her. When Mafia thugs get involved, she barely avoids kidnapping and torture. Meanwhile, there's her love life to deal with. Can she be physically attracted to Ranger and be in love with Joe? Evanovich spins all these threads, plus more, into a lunatic tapestry of nonstop action peopled by wacky characters straight out of a 1930s screwball comedy: Steph's Grandma Mazur, 80 years old, with the world view of a teenage punk; Mooner and Dougie, two lovable but zonked-out stolen goods dealers who have a closeout sale before going to jail; Habib and Mitchell, mobsters who follow Steph when Mitchell's wife doesn't need the car for kids' soccer games; and Steph's co-worker and pal, Lula, a gun-toting ex-prostitute always ready for an adventure. Evanovich just keeps getting better. (June)