Twelve Sharp

Have you ever laughed so hard you couldn't breathe or so hard that your eyes watered and couldn't see? Well, that is the normal reaction to Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series. These books are for the fun of it all, a means to get away, however briefly, from all the serious business in this world.
Janet started this series back in 1994 with One For The Money and has hit a bull's-eye with each succeeding book right up to the recently published Twelve Sharp. This book was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 5 weeks plus is #1 on our own library's most requested book list.
Stephanie Plum is a former lingerie buyer turned woman bounty hunter out of Trenton, New Jersey with a cast of characters, that in my mind, are typical New Jerseyites. With Stephanie's friend and co-worker, Lula, a former 'Ho, Vinney (the pervert) her boss, Office Manager Connie, her Grandma Mazur, Stephanie's parents and the two To-Die-For Hunks in her life - Joe Morelli and Ranger there are never ending high jinks. From Stephanie's aversion to guns to the long list of bad guys who have jumped bail, Stephanie and her cohorts keep the laughs rolling right off the page.
In Twelve Sharp, we go along with Lula and Stephanie to visit an adult bookstore called Pleasure Treasures to find a bail jumper. They find much more and since Lula "likes to keep up with the technology", well, you might be able to imagine this created the funniest scenes in the book.
But apart from the laughter, this book showed us a side of Ranger we have been waiting a long time to see. According to Stephanie, Ranger is a former Special Forces Super Hero who lives in the Bat Cave. What we see is a concerned father with vulnerabilities we all have. This is the most serious book in the series. And in the end, Stephanie helps Ranger make all things right after much mayhem.
I highly recommend this book and all the books in the series. Reading them in order isn't a must but you will miss a lot of the background if you don't.
Take a few minutes and visit Janet's website at http://www.evanovich.com. There you can enter a contest to name the next book, find out all kinds of fascinating information about Stephanie, for example, Stephanie has wreaked or has been involved in wreaking 18 vehicles in this series, there is a recipe for Stephanie's Mom's Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Lula's Words of Wisdom (Wow), all the information you would EVER want to know about Grandma Mazur plus all the delicious information on Ranger and Joe. This is a really fun site.
When a I hear that someone I know is ill or in the hospital, I always send them a copy of One For The Money, I have heard that laughter is the best medicine and I believe it. I do wonder sometimes if some have ever burst a few stitches from laughing while reading these books. I think it would be worth it.