SEVEN UP

When her cousin Vinny, of Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, tells Stephanie Plum that her next unwilling subject is DeChooch, who’s skipped to the tune of $50,000, Steph is less than thrilled. Fuhgedaboudit, says New Jersey’s least productive, most seductive bounty hunter: “He’s old, and he kills people, and he’s dating my grandmother.” But no experienced Plum-watcher will take that as definitive. Steph (Hot Six, 2000, etc.), often means yes when she says no—particularly if the question involves money or sex. In this case, the money amounts to five large if she can bag DeChooch. As for sex, enter hunk Trenton detective Joe Morelli and hunk bounty hunter Ranger Manoso, both eager to resume the never-ending battle for Steph’s bodacious body, of which both have made notable conquests. But now there’s a complicating factor. Steph appears to have engaged herself to marry Morelli, though Ranger can be forgiven if he perceives a certain ambiguity in that complex relationship. At any rate, DeChooch proves exactly the handful Steph feared he might. True, he’s got cataracts, and it’s been a while since he actually blew anyone away, but the old lion is nobody’s pussycat. Besides, he has lots of friends and enemies, none of them out to make Steph’s life easier.

Though Steph and company try hard, there’s an unsettling sense of the overfamiliar this time—the sense of a long-running series hitting the wall. It’ll do for the army of true-blue fans, but it’s not the one to use as a recruiting tool.