Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich

Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
Buy Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: General Fiction
Reviewer: Amy Weatherstone
Summary: Episode twelve of the Stephanie Plum, Bounty Hunter series sees new characters and a lot of old favourites. It's highly recommended by the Bookbag.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 352	Date: June 2007
Publisher: Headline Review
ISBN: 978-0755334070
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When I first started reading Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter series, I never imagined there would be 12 books' worth of entertainment to be derived from the series... but I'm still hooked and often trawl Amazon to see if there will be another instalment in this fabulous collection, and if so when it will be published.

Yes, the plots are all basically the same - Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter and fast food freak, blunders along with varying degrees of success and non-varying degrees of mayhem, then ends up capturing her man. However, none of this matters to the legions of Evanovich fans as the books are all distinctly different, peppered with old favourite characters and new even crazier ones, and plenty of Stephanie's cars blowing up in the process.

The action is always fast-paced and at times surreal, but make no mistake: after reading Twelve Sharp, or indeed any of the Stephanie Plum books before it, you WILL want to gear up in your best leather finery and be a bounty hunter too!

Twelve Sharp features all of the familiar characters we have grown to know and love from the previous books in the series - Morelli the cop, Ranger the bounty hunter extraordinaire, Grandma Mazur, Lula (ex-ho and now filing clerk and trainee bounty hunter), Sally Sweet (cross-dressing rock star and part-time school bus driver), and Connie (long-suffering office manager of Vincent Plum bail bonds), plus arch-enemy Joyce Barnhardt, with a couple of new characters also being established. Melvin Pickle, pervert filing assistant, and Dave and Scooter, homosexual funeral parlour owners fresh out of mortuary college, all make their debut in Twelve Sharp, and I'm hoping they become regulars in future books.

The characters are written about in such detail and with an uncanny observation for the weird and wonderful that the reader feels like they really know them. Evanovich's eye for detail also comes into play when describing the surroundings etc - again, you feel like you're there.

I'm very happy that Lula is given a large part to play in Twelve Sharp as she is one of my absolute favourite characters and the way she is portrayed is fabulous. The exchanges between her and Stephanie, and the deep friendship there, keep the book moving along nicely, especially with the surreal situations they always manage to find themselves up to their necks in.

The twelfth instalment sees Stephanie still torn between the two men in her life - on again/off again cop boyfriend Joe Morelli, and mentor Ranger.

An unusual twist in this story is that this time it is Stephanie who must step up and put her life on the line for Ranger, when it is usually the other way around. Their relationship remains deeply complex and Ranger, as always, remains sexually attracted to, yet baffled, amused and confused by, our favourite apprehension agent.

It is a tale full of twists and turns which ultimately ends well, with plenty of laughs, tension and action along the way. The good thing about Janet Evanovich's style of writing is that there are no real "technical terms" used, the reader never feels out of their depth, and the prose never becomes dry or long-winded.

As always, Stephanie's family feature heavily in this book, with characters everyone can relate to having someone like in their family. The dialogue between them is laugh-out-loud funny, yet there can be genuinely touching moments too.

Stephanie's father's long-suffering semi-tolerance of Grandma Mazur is a favourite part for me, as it has been in all the previous books in the series too. The funeral parlour viewing-obsessed Grandma Mazur is an important character in her own right and keeps readers highly entertained throughout with her misdemeanours.

Twelve Sharp ends on a high note and happily leaves the door wide open for the 13th bounty hunter escapade... and I for one can't wait.

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