A Canine Garbage Disposal

Re: “Hot Six” by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie has agreed to watch somebody’s dog for a couple of days. The dog is part golden retriever and his name is Bob.

She soon finds out that Bob eats everything. One day Grandma Mazur was cleaning Stephanie’s cupboards. She left for a moment and Bob had eaten all the prunes, Frosted Flakes and marshmallows that were sitting on the countertop.

He also eats cake, cardboard boxes, pizza, furniture and car upholstery. In short, he’s a canine garbage disposal.



What Stephanie finds out a few days later is the dog’s owner never intended to return for him. So the joke is on Stephanie and she is stuck with Bob. But she doesn’t think it’s a joke, she is starting to like Bob and decides to keep him.

One night Stephanie asks her boyfriend cop Joe Morelli to dog-sit Bob for a couple of hours. She warns Joe to watch Bob, that he will eat everything.

Joe jokes that Bob should be made a cop, and asks what’s his liquor capacity.

Stay tuned for more posts about this book.

Just a Girl, Her Hamster and Her Grandma

Re: “Hot Six” by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum lives in a one bedroom apartment with her hamster Rex. Rex lives in a little glass aquarium and is content with running on his exercise wheel and eating handouts of people food from Stephanie.

Stephanie’s grandmother is normally content to live with Stephanie’s parents - but not lately. Grandma Mazur has packed her things and headed for Stephanie’s apartment. It seems there was an argument between Grandma and Stephanie’s father, and now Grandma has come to live with Stephanie. Grandma claims she is going to learn how to drive and find her own apartment. Oh boy.

Grandma Mazur says she’ll sleep on Stephanie’s couch, but Stephanie feels bad about that so she offers her own bed to Grandma. Now Stephanie is sleeping on her own couch. I’d probably do the same thing if it was me.

After a few days of living with her grandmother, Stephanie notices some things. Like Grandma willingly eats dessert first, before the main meal. That never would have happened when Stephanie’s grandfather was alive. Things were very traditional then, and Stephanie wonders if her Grandma would have been different if she hadn’t married her Grandpa.

Would Grandma have eaten dessert first all the time?

Stay tuned for more posts about this book.

“Four to Score” by Janet Evanovich

My summer with bounty hunter Stephanie Plum continues with “Four to Score”.

Stephanie has been asked to find Maxine Nowicki, who was arrested for stealing her ex-boyfriend’s car. Maxine never showed for her court appearance and now she is classified as a felon.

Stephanie first tries talking with the boyfriend, Eddie Kuntz. Eddie thinks he is God’s gift to women and starts hitting on Stephanie. But she manages to get all the scoop on Maxine’s potential whereabouts, including her family, friends and work addresses.

Even so, Eddie winds up getting invited to dinner at Stephanie’s parent’s house in the burg. (Seems Eddie lost Stephanie’s business card and tried to look her up in the phone book. She wasn’t listed so he called her parent’s number. Grandma Mazur answered the phone, and need I say more?)

Turns out that Eddie gets a note from Maxine via ‘airmail’ - it was attached to a rock thrown through his window. It contains a cryptic message that neither Stephanie or Eddie can decipher. Stephanie decides to let some of her elderly neighbors in her apartment building take a crack at the message. After all, they do crossword puzzles most of the time so they should be able to solve this.

Unfortunately none of them can, but one neighbor refers Stephanie to her nephew who is supposed to be a whiz at solving puzzles. His name is Salvatore Sweet, aka Sally Sweet.

How Do You Lose 24 Caskets?

Re: “Two for the Dough” by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie is asked to take on a ‘side job’ by Spiro Stiva, who helps operate Stiva’s Mortuary. He will pay her $1,000 to find 24 bare-bones (HA!) caskets that are missing. They were stored in a secure storage locker. Stephanie has a terrifying thought: what if the caskets aren’t empty? But Spiro assures her they are.

Of course Spiro wants to keep the theft hush-hush from the police, but Stephanie tells Morelli about it anyway. They both wonder why anyone would want to steal 24 caskets?

To check this out, Stephanie will have to find a new set of wheels as her Jeep has been stolen. Grandma Mazur has just the thing: her brother Sandor’s 1953 Buick. It’s powder blue with a white top and whitewall tires, and it’s big - very big. Stephanie’s father loves this car - says it’s built to last. We’ll see how long this car lasts with Stephanie!



(This is a picture of a 1953 Buick Roadmaster that was owned by Howard Hughes. Picture is courtesy www.MotorCities.com.)

“Two for the Dough” by Janet Evanovich

This is the second book in the Stephanie Plum series. As the book opens, Stephanie is after Kenny Mancuso - and so is bounty-hunter extraordinaire Ranger AND Trenton cop Joe Morelli. Mancuso has been charged with shooting his former best friend, a gas station attendant, in the knee. Now Mancuso is a fugitive from the law and Stephanie is determined to find him. In a strange twist, Morelli is related to Mancuso - they are cousins.

Soon we find out that the gas station attendant has been shot to death. His name was Moogey Bues. I wonder where in the world did author Evanovich come up with this name? Maybe her favorite band was the Moody Blues?

Soon we are introduced to Stephanie’s 72-year-old Grandma Mazur’s ‘hobby’: she likes to go to funeral homes to view the deceased. The problem is that when she does this, she usually makes a spectacle of herself. Not only by the clothes she wears (like a fire-engine red dress), but by the things she does. Like tripping over her own shoes and falling into a casket!

If I were her, I’d get another hobby. But then we’d miss those moments of outrageous behavior that are good for a laugh.

Bounty Hunter Training

Re: One for the Money by Janet Evanovich

Most everyone needs some on-the-job training when they start a new job. Stephanie sure does in her new role as a bounty hunter and apprehension agent. So Vinnie’s secretary Connie sets Stephanie up with Ricardo Carlos Manoso, a.k.a. Ranger. Connie says Ranger is supposed to be pretty good as he was formerly with Special Forces.

At first Ranger doesn’t take Stephanie seriously. But he likes her and says it’s OK to be like Professor Henry Higgins in the movie My Fair Lady. As Stephanie progresses on-the-job, he realizes he has to help her more than he thought. So he helps get her a gun and handcuffs and all the other gear she’ll need to be a bona-fide bounty hunter.

Grandma Mazur is very proud of Stephanie’s new career and to show it, picks up Stephanie’s gun and pretends to fire away. Only the gun is loaded and she shoots the chicken they are having for dinner that evening. And also breaks a plate and puts a hole in the tablecloth and the table. Seems the fun never ends at the Plum house!

Hello Stephanie Plum!

Re: 'One for the Money' by Janet Evanovich

We get our first introduction to Stephanie Plum in this book. She was born and raised in Trenton, New Jersey in a blue-collar area called The Burg. Stephanie is single and lives in an apartment by herself. But she routinely heads home to have dinner with her mother, father and Grandma Mazur (her grandma on her mom’s side). Stephanie has a married sister - a fact that her mother is always bringing up to her.

Stephanie had been working in Newark as a discount lingerie buyer but got laid off from her job. So she’s been hocking her possessions to come up with money to pay the bills. Unfortunately her Mazda Miata has just been reposessed and she is desperate. Her mother says she should go see her cousin Vinnie Plum as she heard he has a filing job open at his bail bonds company.

When Stephanie gets there she is informed that the filing job has been filled. But Connie, Vinnie’s secretary, talks Stephanie into doing skip tracing. The job involves finding people that don’t show up for their scheduled court appearance. If she succeeds, she can earn 10% of the posted bond amount.

So for Stephanie’s very first assignment, she decides to go after a guy who’s bail was set at $100,000! Doing the math - if Stephanie can bring this guy in to the police station, she can make $10,000!

As she drools over this thought, she asks who the guy is: it’s Joe Morelli. You could say Stephanie is ‘intimately’ acquainted with Morelli as he took away her virginity when she was in high school.

So Stephanie decides to become a ‘bounty hunter’ and go after Morelli.

Goofy Grandmas

RE: Dearly Depotted by Kate Collins

One endearing character in a few of these mystery series is the goofy grandma who provides a lot of wacky comic relief. Of course there is Grandma Mazur in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. And there is 'Nana', Emily Andrews grandmother in the Passport to Peril mystery series by Maddy Hunter.

Abby Knight has her own 'grandma' of sorts. She's Grandma Osborne. You see Abby was once engaged to Pryce Osborne, of the very rich and snobbish Osborne clan. Pryce was pressured by his family to break off his engagement to Abby when she flunked out of law school. The family is very concerned about social status and it just wouldn't have looked good for Pryce to marry Abby. But Pryce's grandmother always liked Abby and doesn't miss an opportunity to rub it in. In fact if the Osborne family needs help with Grandma, they ask Abby!

Grandma Osborne plays a role in this mystery, as she was the one who found the body of Jack Snyder at the reception. She thinks he is just sleeping, but finds out otherwise in a big hurry.