"Stephanie Plum"

Trenton's most popular bounty hunter Stephanie Plum's finds her personal life going smoothly. She and her significant other Joe Morelli are a strong entry while she and fellow bounty hunter Ranger strike enough sparks to light up the Manhattan skyline. Her sister is hours from giving birth and remains undecided if she wants to marry her baby's father. Joe's grandmother, who isn't Stephanie's fan, keeps having visions of Joe married to some one else.

Professionally, Stephanie feels under siege. Her cousin Vinnie signed a bond for Samuel Singh but his landlady says that he disappeared, leaving all his belongings, except has laptop behind. Stephanie goes to his place of business but his boss claims he was a loner without any friends. During her search for him, she gets shot at, tranquilized with a dart, and a psycho stalks her, sending roses and threatening notes. She sees a man shot and receives snuff snapshots. Morelli and Ranger do their best to protect her, but Stephanie knows if she wants her life back, she must outwit the stalker.

Janet Evanovich does the impossible by injecting a great deal of laugh out loud humor into a serial killer book. TO THE NINES ratchets up the heat between the heroine and the bounty hunter while showing that Stephanie can stay in a relationship with her true love Joe. The fast paced plot is loaded with lots of tension, sexual and life threatening. The more one reads a Stephanie Plum novel the more one wants to sit in a corner with the next book.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted June 3, 2003

Summary

Stephanie Plum's got rent to pay, people shooting at her, and psychos wanting her dead every day of the week (much to the dismay of her mother, her family, the men in her life, the guy who slices meat at the deli . . . oh, the list goes on). An ordinary person would cave under the pressure.

But hey, she's from Jersey.

Stephanie Plum may not be the best bounty hunter in beautiful downtown Trenton, but she's pretty darn good at turning bad situations her way . . . and she always gets her man. In To the Nines, her cousin Vinnie (who's also her boss) has posted bail on Samuel Singh, an illegal immigrant. When the elusive Mr. Singh goes missing, Stephanie is on the case. But what she uncovers is far more sinister than anyone imagines and leads to a group of killers who give new meaning to the word hunter.

In a race against time that takes her from the Jersey Turnpike to the Vegas Strip, Stephanie Plum is on the chase of her life. The unforgettable characters, nonstop action, high-stakes suspense, and sheer entertainment of To the Nines define Janet Evanovich as unique among today's writers.