Lean Mean Thirteen

 

 

 

By: Janet Evanovich
Narrated by: Lorelei King
Series: Stephanie Plum, Book 13
Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
Unabridged Audiobook
Release date: 06-01-07

 

 

Summary

New secrets, old flames, and hidden agendas are about to send bounty hunter Stephanie Plum on her most outrageous adventure yet!

MISTAKE #1 Dickie  Orr. Stephanie was married to him for about fifteen minutes before she  caught him cheating on her with her arch-nemesis Joyce Barnhardt.  Another fifteen minutes after that Stephanie filed for divorce, hoping  to never see either one of them again.

MISTAKE #2 Doing  favors for super bounty hunter Carlos Manoso (a.k.a. Ranger). Ranger  needs her to meet with Dickie and find out if he's doing something  shady. Turns out, he is. Turns out, he's also back to doing Joyce  Barnhardt. And it turns out Ranger's favors always come with a price...

MISTAKE #3 Going  completely nutso while doing the favor for Ranger, and trying to apply  bodily injury to Dickie in front of the entire office. Now Dickie  has disappeared and Stephanie is the natural suspect in his  disappearance. Is Dickie dead? Can he be found? And can she stay one  step ahead in this new, dangerous game? Joe Morelli, the hottest cop in  Trenton, NJ is also keeping Stephanie on her toes―and he may know more  than lets on about her…It's a cat-and-mouse game for Stephanie Plum,  where the ultimate prize might be her life.

 

 

A fun 7 hours

Evanovich is the antithesis to Sue Grafton (which I stopped reading somewhere around K; lost interest). Where Grafton is dark and edgy,  Evanovich is laugh out-loud funny, like reading a comic book. The "Stephanie Plum" series  is "cozy" without the heavy dose of saccharine I find in a lot of the hard-core cozies; too much sugar in the diet is not a good thing. The characters are a hoot, caricatures, really but good people when all is said and done (except for the bad guys, who are rotten to the core, of course). Fun to read every now and then but don't look for me to be binge-reading the entire series -- even if I do have two Stephanie Plum's scheduled for Halloween Bingo. File this one under "necessary roughage."

Three stars