FINGER LICKIN’ FIFTEEN: A Stephanie Plum Novel
Janet Evanovich
St. Martin’s Press
Mystery
ISBN: 9780312383282
FINGER LICKIN’ FIFTEEN is pure Janet Evanovich. And who would have it otherwise?
Trenton bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is off men. TOTALLY. She and on-again, off-again Joe Morelli, her hottie cop boyfriend, are so over. Equally hot Ranger is also off her list, but when she finds herself side by side, and more, with both former romantic interests, she has to remind herself several times a day just why she’s on a man-free diet.
Stephanie is plugging away at her usual list of bail jumpers when Ranger offers her an opportunity to go undercover for his high-tech Rangeman Surveillance company. A series of break-ins at the homes of some of his most valued customers leads him to suspect that a major security leak is an inside job. He enlists Stephanie’s help to uncover the hacker.
Meanwhile, Stephanie’s bounty hunting sidekick Lula is front and center as only she can be in luminous spandex and platform ’ho shoes when she’s an eyewitness to a decapitation in broad daylight. A popular Trenton TV personality, the Chipotle Chef, loses his head and his leading position in a local barbeque sauce cook-off with a $1 million prize. A rival chef may be a suspect. Lula tries to figure out a way to spy on the contestants, and snooping around the grounds seems her best bet to track down the killers. Solving the murder will up her status in the fugitive apprehension business. With the prize money in the sauce cook-off, plus the reward from the Chipotle BBQ Sauce company to find the killers as incentive, she decides to enter as a chef.
Lula’s concept of home cooking is microwaved leftovers from Cluck-In-A-Bucket, and her acquaintance with barbeque sauces comes out of a squeeze bottle at a local rib shack. No obstacle is too great for Lula, so even when she realizes that her kitchen is equipped with only a hot plate and a microwave oven, she dangles the prize money in front of Connie, the office manager at the bonding agency. When Connie won’t let her within a mile of her kitchen, she moves the operation into Stephanie’s mom and dad’s house. Grandma Mazur jumps at the chance to split the prize money, and the Flamin’ A** BBQ lab is open. When Lula recognizes the giggling maniac with a meat cleaver who starts stalking her as one of the killers, she moves the whole operation to Stephanie’s apartment in the wee hours of the morning while Stephanie is on an overnight stakeout for Ranger.
When the killers track her down at Stephanie’s and firebombs the apartment, Stephanie is left homeless. Now would be a good time to patch it up with Morelli, even if temporarily. Morelli, who wants her back and doesn’t have a clue where it all went wrong, has a houseful of relatives.
Where to go? With Ranger working around the clock, he offers Stephanie his apartment while she does her undercover snooping of his employees. What could be simpler than to move in to his sumptuous living quarters?
Nothing is simple in Stephanie’s life.
FINGER LICKIN’ FIFTEEN is not named for the number of cars destroyed in this edition of the hit bestseller. You can count on at least one spectacular demolition, but it’s close. Stephanie has her own incentive plan to keep Trenton car dealers in business.
Without a scorecard I can’t report how many autos explode, burst into flames or roll, but at one point Ranger moans, “Babe --- I only had that one for 12 hours!” “That” being the brand new, jet black Porsche Cayenne that was stolen under Stephanie’s nose after its twin was blown up the preceding day.
Our Wonder Woman bounty hunter juggles two jobs and two of the hottest law enforcement agents on the Eastern Seaboard at arms length, wraps up the mysterious computer hacking incident, and with Ranger’s help nabs her bail jumpers just in time for the end of the book. The mystery of her sex life we’ll leave for you to discover, but remember, Stephanie never had any intentions of becoming a nun, even if her mother occasionally wishes otherwise.
--- Reviewed by Roz Shea
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