Seven Up (Stephanie Plum, No. 7) (Stephanie Plum Novels) - Hardcover

About the Author

Janet Evanovich is the author of the Stephanie Plum books, including One for the Money and Sizzling Sixteen, and the Diesel & Tucker series, including Wicked Appetite. Janet studied painting at Douglass College, but that art form never quite fit, and she soon moved on to writing stories. She didn't have instant success: she collected a big box of rejection letters. As she puts it, "When the box was full I burned the whole damn thing, crammed myself into pantyhose and went to work for a temp agency." But after a few months of secretarial work, she managed to sell her first novel for $2,000. She immediately quit her job and started working full-time as a writer. After 12 romance novels, she switched to mystery, and created Stephanie Plum. The rest is history. Janet's favorite exercise is shopping, and her drug of choice is Cheeze Doodles. She and her husband live in New Hampshire, in house with a view of the Connecticut River Valley.

Reviews

It's always a treat to go out on a case with Stephanie Plum, the sassy, adventurous, but not always successful Trenton, N.J., bounty hunter. In her seventh outing (after 2000's Hot Six), Stephanie's employer, her bailbondsman cousin, Vinnie, gives her an easy job: pick up vicious senior citizen Eddie DeChooch, who is constantly sighted racing around Trenton in a borrowed white Cadillac, but whom no one can grab. The usual characters inhabit the novel: Steph's former high school buddies, the zonked-out Dougie and Mooner; and Evanovich's best creation, feisty Grandma Mazur. Stephanie's much-resented sister Valerie returns from California with her two daughters, her "perfect" marriage ended, and moves in with her parents, to their dismay. At times the plot meanders: Stephanie and pal Lula spend too much time running from house to house in the inbred Burg neighborhood, while two semi-retired crooks looking for DeChooch keep breaking into her apartment for little reason. All in all this is another zesty Evanovich read, but one that doesn't quite hit the high marks of her last two.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The secret to Stephanie Plum's success is revealed on the very first page: her childhood desire to be an intergalactic princess, wear sexy footgear, and carry a cool weapon. She's done it--not the princess part, but she works for her cousin Vinnie as a bail bondswoman, making enough to pay the rent, catch up to the car payments, and afford those sexy shoes and cool guns. The Burg in Trenton, New Jersey, is full of the characters and low-lifes with whom Stephanie grew up (see "Story behind the Story" on the opposite page); this time Stephanie is trying to bring in one of those neighborhood characters, Eddie DeChooch, for his court date. Choochy is old, nearly blind, and close to incontinent, but he manages to evade Stephanie and his various other pursuers until the very end. Subplots abound: Stephanie's perfect sister, Valerie, comes home with her perfect marriage in tatters; Dougie and Mooner, sweet, befuddled fences, get into horrific trouble; Grandma Mazur discovers the, er . . . good vibrations of a Harley. And our heroine's erotic tango with hunkbar Morelli is complicated not only by the order of a wedding dress but also by the scary and irresistible Ranger, her mentor in bounty hunting, who makes her a bargain she can't refuse. Almost every chapter has a laugh-out-loud moment, but Stephanie has some time to think, too: she knows how complicated the feelings are between her and Morelli, and she knows that Ranger is complicated, too. Even Stephanie's mother gets a real moment. Funny, sexy, scary--how can we wait till next year? GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Marked by wise-cracking humor, eccentric characters, and a gritty urban New Jersey setting that thanks to The Sopranos is now quite hip, Evanovich's "Stephanie Plum" series attracts an ever-increasing number of fans with each book. However, readers will be disappointed in this stale outing, especially after the hilarious Hot Six (LJ 5/1/00). Once again, the curvaceous bounty hunter is on the trail of an elusive bail jumper, this time cigarette smuggler Eddie DeChooch, who despite his cataracts and advanced age continually gives Stephanie the slip. Once again, she is trailed by two wise guys, also looking for Eddie. And once again, Stephanie must choose between sexy vice-cop Joe Morelli, to whom she gets accidentally engaged, and sexy fellow bounty hunter Ranger. What had been a fresh and winning formula in the earlier books has disintegrated into unamusing slapstick; there's barely a trace of mystery or plot, and the characters have become cartoons. Despite these serious flaws, there will still be patron demand.
- Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.