I’ve written before about the hold Janet Evanovich has on me, and my undying devotion to Ranger, so my second (woohoo, I’m on number 2!) review this year is the latest installment in the Stephanie Plum series, Dirty Thirty.
BEWARE SPOILERS!
The plot is classic Stephanie. Wacky crime, wacky hijinks, something blows up, Lula buys a bunch of food, etc. Seriously, I’ve never been to Trenton, but I’m not sure Janet’s doing their tourism board a whole lot of good. Big Blue doesn’t make an appearance, but I’ll forgive that because there is a way too short scene where Stephanie, Grandma, and Mrs. Plum engage in a car chase – with Mrs. Plum driving her trusty, reliable Toyota. I just love Mrs. Plum. If ever there was a woman who deserved a secret bottle of Four Roses, it’s her.
But what’s most important here is Morelli has gone to Miami, and in the previous couple of books has told Stephanie he’s not so much interested in marriage. Morelli being gone leaves Ranger unfettered access to Stephanie. And Stephanie – who isn’t good at resisting Ranger, and who needs a place to crash after her apartment is blown up (again) – is starting to think about her future, and what it means to be with Morelli if he doesn’t want to do the marriage deal. And so, in a casual conversation with Ranger, she mentions she might like to get married one day. AND RANGER SAYS HE WILL MARRY HER. Stephanie is blown away by this information, but is semi-convinved that he’s just teasing, even though they make a plan to go to Vegas “next Wednesday”. I was semi-convinced he was just teasing, too, except for that Ranger allowed Stephanie to stay at his place WITH BOB THE DOG.
REPEAT: Ranger allowed not only Stephanie to stay over, but BOB, too!.
And then, like, twenty pages later, Morelli comes home and declares that HE wants to marry Stephanie.
And that’s the end.
JANET.
I know we can’t keep going back and forth with Ranger and Morelli, and like, three or four books ago, I said that Janet was going to have to make some decisions here, because this can only go on for so long. But I gotta say, with this bit of news, I think Janet just bought herself three or four more books worth of will they or won’t they.
