Hot Six

Janet Evanovich

Ranger, Stephanie Plum's bounty hunter mentor, appears to have murdered a gun runner's son. Now the police, the gun runners' mob, and the drug runners' mob are trying to find him. So is Vincent Plum because Ranger has skipped bail on a minor charge a few weeks earlier. Stephanie refuses to try to bring in Ranger. She knows if he does not want to be found, he won't be. So Joyce Barnhart takes Ranger's bond hunt.

Stephanie instead takes some other bail skippers. The man who murdered his wife now had a grudge against all women. He does not appreciate Stephanie trying to take him in to the police. She picks up one of the local burn-outs who forgot his court date for possession. While waiting for her at the police station, he lights a joint in her car. And Stephanie loses yet another car.

Plus she finds herself babysitting a huge, rather dumb dog. Grandma Mazur moves out of her mother's home and in with Stephanie. Joe Morelli keeps visiting. She is followed by some hit men from the drug runners' mob. Ranger shows up when she least expects him and asks her help spying on the gun runners. He disappears again. She will not tell anyone when he appears, but passes on messages to him. Before she has finished, Morelli and Ranger are meeting to protect her from herself and the different dangerous people following her.

Once again, Evanovich has come up with a winner. As usual, I find the language rough. But otherwise I love these books. There is this wonderful scene where the dog has licked off part of the icing on a cake at her mother's. Her mother took icing off the top, spread it to the denuded side, then added coconut around so no one would notice. Morelli advises Stephanie she might not want to eat the outside of the cake. When I started laughing out loud, my niece was demanding to know what was so funny.

If you haven't read any of these, you really should start in order with One for the Money. There are relationships that build throughout the series. While good, this book would lose some of its effect if the previous five haven't been read first. These are classified as mysteries. Instead, they are suspense/thriller/comedies. I recommend them highly.

Notice: Non-graphic violence, Strong indecent language, Suggestive dialogue or situations

The Series:

One for the Money
Two for the Dough
Three to Get Deadly
Four to Score
High Five
Hot Six
Seven Up
Hard Eight
Visions of Sugar Plums
To the Nines
Ten Big Ones
Eleven on Top
Twelve Sharp
Plum Lovin'
Lean Mean Thirteen
Plum Lucky
Fearless Fourteen
Plum Spooky
Finger Lickin' Fifteen
Sizzling Sixteen
Smokin' Seventeen
Explosive Eighteeen

Murder in a Hot Flash by Marlys Millhiser