Goodreads Synopsis: Welcome to Trenton, New Jersey, home to wiseguys, average Joes, and Stephanie Plum, who sports a big attitude and even bigger money problems (since losing her job as a lingerie buyer for a department store). Stephanie needs cash--fast--but times are tough, and soon she's forced to turn to the last resort of the truly desperate: family.
Stephanie lands a gig at her sleazy cousin Vinnie's bail bonding company. She's got no experience. But that doesn't matter. Neither does the fact that the bail jumper in question is local vice cop Joe Morelli. From the first time he looked up her dress, to the time he first got into her pants, to the time Steph hit him with her father's Buick, M-o-r-e-l-l-i has spelled t-r-o-u-b-l-e. And now the hot guy is in hot water--wanted for murder.
Abject poverty is a great motivator for learning new skills, but being trained in the school of hard knocks by people like psycho prizefighter Benito Ramirez isn't. Still, if Stephanie can nab Morelli in a week, she'll make a cool ten grand. All she has to do is become an expert bounty hunter overnight--and keep herself from getting killed before she gets her man.
My Confession: M-o-r-e-l-l-i may spell trouble for Stephanie, but it reads like
a-d-d-i-c-t-e-d for me. And not just to Joe Morelli, who is--without a doubt--one of the hottest, most badass, swoon-worthy male characters I've ever read. Ever. He's a hot-blooded, Italian cop with a bad attitude and notorious reputation. He hates vegetables, enjoys watching sports, and relieved Stephanie of her virginity behind a bakery counter when she was 16. Regardless of whether you think he's guilty of murdering an unarmed man, in the first few chapters, you'll convict him of being murderously sexy.
Okay, that was cheesy. But considering I'm already reading my fifteenth Stephanie Plum book (yes, I've burned through them that quickly), I've had a lot of time to marinate over Morelli's character. Curse you, Janet Evanovich, for making me fall for a character who undoubtedly does not exist in real life.
Anyway.
I have to take my hat off to any author who can cause readers to become heavily invested in the same group of characters for eighteen books (and counting). What makes the character of Stephanie Plum so endearing is the fact that she's so normal. Her roommate is a hamster named Rex, she's obsessed with doughnuts and other equally-fattening foods (probably explains her affinity for spandex), she bums meals from her crazy family a few times a week, and she's hopelessly flawed when it comes to being a bounty hunter. She's outmatched in her quest to bring in Morelli, and soon finds herself teaming up with the suspected-murderer in a plot to prove his innocence. Add in Batman-esque Ranger, an incredibly hunky and skilled bounty hunter who becomes Stephanie's mentor, and skin-chillingly scary boxer Benito Ramirez, who specializes in rape and murder, and One for the Money makes for a fun, freaky, and fabulous read.
Recommendation: This first installment in the Stephanie Plum series will sink its claws into you, and if you didn't buy the next couple books already, you will. If you're anything like me, you'll get those nifty mass market paperbacks that come three-to-a-box. The writing is quick, the banter is snappy, and the characters are the perfect mixture of endearing and goofy. Once the story gets started, it's hard to put down, and there are moments outside the comic and lighthearted that will make your pulse race and your palms sweat. These aren't sugar stories, and the quirkiness and humor mixed throughout make for a good break in the action, but by no means diminish the seriousness of the crimes commited and the danger Stephanie finds herself in. It's the suspense that keeps you reading. And it's the characters (ahem, Morelli, ahem ) that will bring you back seventeen more times (and counting).
Rating: 4/5
320 pages, first published by Penguin on March 25, 1995 and later by Harpercollins in 2001 and St. Martin's Press in 2003
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