When Stephanie's friend and mentor, Ranger, ends up on their office's "failure to appear" list, the police and bounty hunters aren't the only ones looking for him. He's the last person known to have spoken with a murdered member of an infamous crime family, and a lot of the people with an interest in the case think Stephanie can lead them to their man. She tries to help Ranger clear his name while her apartment becomes a temporary refuge for a pair of stoners, her grandmother, and a dog named Bob.

Despite having one of the best put together mystery plots of the series, I didn't like this one quite as much as the last. Stephanie is improving at the whole bounty hunter thing, but the men in her life still try to keep her in the dark. It's an understandable impulse, but in this case it put her in more danger than she'd have been in if they had kept her more in the loop.

I loved Stephanie's trip with Lula to the Trek party and hearing about Joyce getting a little payback for her nasty behavior. And I know that the mysterious bad boy thing is a cliche, but I can't help preferring Ranger, at least in the short term.