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Janet Evanovich struck gold with Stephanie Plum's adventure series, still going strong with ELEVEN ON TOP in the word processor. Meanwhile, to give her eagerly awaiting fans an Evanovich fix, one of the nation's bestselling fiction writers found time to create a new heroine, Alexandra (Barney) Barnaby.
Evanovich shifts the action from Stephanie Plum's Trenton, New Jersey, to Baltimore, where Barney, or Alex as she prefers to be called, holds down a lackluster job at an insurance company. Alex's background, however, lends her a need for adventure and unconventional career choices. Thanks to her high school and college summer job in her dad's garage, she knows her way around the insides of an automobile, and she once dabbled in the racecar circuit.
"Just because I know how to change a guy's oil, doesn't mean I want to spend the rest of my life on my back, staring up his undercarriage," Alex says. "Okay, so my dad owns a garage. And okay, I have a natural aptitude for rebuilding carburetors. There comes a time in a girl's life when she needs to trade in her mechanic's overalls for a pair of Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Not that I can afford a lot of Manolos, but it's a goal, right?"
Alex is blonde, perky, cute and responsible. Her baby brother, Bill, or Wild Bill as he is known, is anything but responsible. So when he calls her at 2:00 a.m. from Miami telling her not to worry if he disappears for a while, and the call ends in a woman's scream, she's worried. So worried that she's on the next plane to Florida to track him down. When Wild Bill's apartment proves to have been tossed and he turns up missing, along with an expensive boat belonging to his boss, NASCAR driver Sam Hooker, Alex reacts as she always has when her brother gets in trouble. She jumps in to help him.
Evanovich's romance writing background surfaces in METRO GIRL, as Alex teams with Sam Hooker to track down her wayward brother and Hooker's missing yacht. Hot car and boat chases through South Florida's steamy heat raise the emotional temperature of their none-too-friendly partnership in a missing persons adventure that turns into a treasure hunt for sunken gold and a potentially dangerous warhead in Cuba's forbidden waters. Cuban exiled warlord Salzar has designs on a return to power, and will stop at nothing to gain it. Alex, Wild Bill and Sam Hooker stand directly in his way.
We're treated to an array of kinky bad guys and quirky good guys as only Evanovich can devise. There's Judey, Alex's former schoolmate, and his miniature schnauzer Brian. Then there's Slick and Gimpy, a couple of suspicious characters who run afoul of Alex and her newly found girlfriends: three gun-toting, cigar-rolling Cuban refugees.
METRO GIRL meets NASCAR GUY --- a tempting new series in store for Janet Evanovich? Her readers will make it happen, or not --- it's all in the hands of the marketplace. But if Evanovich were an offering on the stock exchange, I'd advise a buy.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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