Better than #7, but fumbling stumbling Plum gets old !

We thoroughly enjoyed Janet Evanovich's first six Stephanie Plum series about a bounty hunter who has trouble getting out of her own way. With a crazy supporting cast family, especially Grandma Mazur; and two male romantic interests -- Ranger, a fellow mysterious bounty hunter; and Morelli, a cop who deflowered Plum in high school, and who seems to be the best bet for her long term -- the humor and enjoyment seemed to come as a natural byproduct of the stories and the author's writing style. However, book #7 seemed so forced out it was a huge disappointment to almost all but her die-hard fans. Thankfully, Hard Eight is more of a return to the earlier work. Our only quibble is that now the ineptitude of Plum, and her tendency to burn up cars and find dead bodies all over the place, is getting a bit stale. It may be the set has little remaining life expectancy as is. But this one continues to entertain with a light story about Plum's inability to capture one of her assignments; about a lawyer named Kloughn, the [brunt:] of innumerable "clown" jokes, who follows Plum around like a puppy; and Steph's inability to resolve her own conflicts about the two men in her life and what to do about them. She finally "gets lucky" about halfway through the book, at which point we were almost relieved for her. But the book ends on some of the same querulous notes about her and Morelli as we've heard before.

A plot about a missing neighbor and her daughter was a slight shift from earlier books, but pretty much continued to pose as the excuse for the Plum goings-on throughout. In sum, Hard Eight represents a pretty typical entry in the Evanovich Plum series, but for those that have read all eight, the title may have some subtle ulterior meanings. Before we get "Nine Ball" (or whatever), perhaps somebody can figure out how to give Plum's life a facelift, as she does not seem to be growing older on us gracefully.