Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich

Reviewed by Doris

Janet Evanovich has built up a huge fan base for her Stephanie Plum series. The incompetent lingerie buyer turned bounty hunter and her menagerie of friends are taking off on another adventure called Notorious Nineteen.  Currently Notorious Nineteen sits at #3 on the NYT Best Sellers list as proof that her fans are still buying this series even though it is a burned out mess. Unless you are a devoted fan of Evanovich’s characters, don’t bother to read this redo of everything Evanovich has been doing through the first eighteen books. (I have noticed a definite slip in the requests we get for the Plum books, but perhaps that’s just my own growing disdain for them shading my view. I like to think our patrons are much more discerning than the average reader!)

What do I mean when I say “re-do?”  Stephanie loses at least one car to a bomb or fire or in this case an RPG in every book. In Notorious Nineteen that happens about six pages into the book. No one is shocked or even mildly surprised. Of course, then Ranger loses one of his beautiful black Porsches and Morelli loses his truck to bombs or fires.  Stephanie ends up driving around in her deceased uncle’s big blue retro Buick just as she does in every book.

Stephanie regularly turns up at her parents’ home for dinner. Her mother is now drinking full glasses of “iced tea” which is really liquor, and her father is still a jerk. Grandma Mazur is still crazy and still trying to be Stephanie running around solving crimes and sleeping with hot men but she is no longer funny.  And speaking of hot men, there is still the back and forth between Ranger and Morelli although Stephanie thinks she might love Morelli and he is her future. Of course that doesn’t keep her from melting every time Ranger looks at her. Typically, Morelli wants her to give up the bounty hunting and danger and be the little wife, while Ranger lets Stephanie be herself with an occasional “Babe” thrown in when she does something really stupid.

Lula, Stephanie’s sidekick, is still eating tons of greasy food and wearing spandex four sizes too small. She still carries a gun she cannot use. She does have what may be the only adventure with some humor—it involves a nudist beach she and Stephanie must visit so they can interview a witness. Meanwhile, she and Stephanie still have some cretin of a criminal either expose himself or manage to totally outsmart them several times.

Is there anything in this book that makes it readable? Well, this one has a little mystery plot unlike most of the others. Two men with large bonds posted by Stephanie’s employer have disappeared after being admitted to the hospital with appendicitis. No one saw them leave. No one has any idea how they got out without staff or cameras recording it. One of the guys who embezzled five million dollars from senior citizens has a wife who is looking for the stolen money.  The other missing man was tied to organized crime and maybe there was a hit out on him. In desperate need of money as usual, Stephanie tries to find the two skippers. I thought Evanovich laid down a very clear track as to what happened to the missing men, and I had figured it out by the end of the third chapter.  What I thought was highly obvious just went over the heads of Stephanie and even Morelli who is supposed to be the hotshot detective.

When I finished reading Notorious Nineteen I sent an email to Evanovich saying much of what I have written here. This is the response I received from one of her assistants.

          “Ken here, Alex's assistant. I'm helping with the email.
But what about the hundreds of thousands who still buy and enjoy the books? We get dozens of           letters every day from people who tell us they love the series and the latest book. In addition, new readers are writing to us all the time who tell us how thrilled they are to have recently discovered the series. Also, the social media is humming with comments from satisfied readers. It seems to me that they'd be pretty disappointed if Janet abruptly ended the series.”

I guess I won’t be winning the Fan of the Month award from Evanovich! I don’t want Evanovich to just quit writing the series. I would like to see some growth in the characters (and the writer) that makes them something more than a waste of ink and paper. I would like to see her develop a real plot other than moving from fire to fire and bad choices. If she is going to keep writing the series then she needs to bring something more to the books than slapstick.  If she cannot do that, then, yes, end the series. Let Stephanie grow up!