Dirty Thirty - Janet Evanovich

 Dirty Thirty - Janet Evanovich

Pub Date: October 31, 2023

She read

As the title indicates, this is number 30 in the adventures of hapless recovery agent, Stephanie Plum of Trenton, NJ. It starts with a simple jewelry store robbery, but when is anything ever simple for Stephanie?  Whatever you think can go wrong in Stephanie’s pursuits, does, and things you can’t even imagine go awry.  All of the familiar characters are here; Lula, Connie, hunky Ranger, and my favorite, Grandma Mazur.  Morelli, Plum’s on and off boyfriend, is mostly MIA, literally, for he is in Miami for a trial.  Bob, his dog, has a major role in this story and is responsible for an incident near the end that made me literally LOL.  All I will say is it involves a baptismal font. 

Yes, the Stephanie Plum novels can be silly, but I really enjoy them. The ridiculous situations and the colorful characters are all very entertaining.  Maybe it's the Jersey (I’m a Jersey girl at heart) setting/jokes/lifestyle that gets to me.  This series is just plain fun.   These books are always good for a quick, amusing read.  I almost don't care about the plot...its the characters I enjoy. I don’t want to spoil anything, but the book ends with a dilemma for Plum.

Although I have probably read all of the books in the series, this can work as a standalone…but it would be so much more fun to go back and read some of the priors and gain a fuller picture of these classic characters.  

Thanks to #netgalley and @atriabooks for the ARC