Four to Score (A Stephanie Plum Mystery)

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
July 1998

Four to Score, Janet Evanovich's aptly titled fourth novel in her popular Stephanie Plum series, is another hilarious, action-filled mystery featuring the quirky Jersey-girl heroine with a brazen attitude and a fashion sense that calls for spandex biking shorts and a .38. Evanovich knows how to build suspenseful but laugh-out-loud scenes that are witty, gritty, and deliciously wry. Stephanie is a delightful protagonist who is just as appealing when she loses her cool as when she keeps it, dealing with bizarre people and circumstances that range from her unbalanced, man-hungry grandmother to a Mafia funeral to a seven-foot-tall (in heels) transvestite guitarist. In the annals of fast-paced comic crime fiction, Plum is already turning out to be quite a unique heroine who has what it takes for the long humorous haul.

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is out to bring back bail jumper Maxine Nowicki. At first it seems like a relatively simple job: Maxine merely stole her ex-boyfriend's car after a silly domestic spat, so nobody expected her to jump bail over such a misdemeanor. The first stop on Stephanie's hunt is the home of Eddie Kuntz, Maxine's no-neck womanizing boyfriend, who at first wants to fool around with Stephanie and then later decides to hire her. He's hoping to track down some "potentially embarrassing" love letters that he claims Maxine stole from him, and although Stephanie realizes there's something a lot more ugly going on, she agrees to take the side job for Kuntz. She needs the money.

Maxine leaves behind clues in the form of letteredcodesthat grow increasingly more difficult. In her desperation, Stephanie turns to an elderly neighbor's nephew, Sally Sweet, a transvestite who not only gets a kick out of joining the bounty hunter in this game but seems quite naturally adept at the job. Adding to Stephanie's woes is her longtime rival, Joyce Barnhardt, who just joined the same bail-bonds firm and does little besides trail Stephanie around town in order to claim the payoff by bringing in Maxine. However, soon the plot begins to turn deadly as friends and family of Maxine are tortured and murdered, possibly by Eddie Kuntz, or someone else looking for the embarrassing "love letters."

Evanovich makes the most use out of an eccentric and varied cast of wildly off-center secondary characters. Stephanie must not only deal with her own Grandma Mazur, who totes a long-barreled .45, but she must also keep her sometimes partner Lula, the 200-pound black ex-hooker always ready with a stun-gun, in check. One of the funniest, standout comedy-of-errors scenes occurs when this outlandish crew heads down to Atlantic City looking for Maxine in a casino. After they spot their target, the place erupts into instant bedlam, with Grandma hopping up onto a blackjack table, Sally pulling a glock out of his garter, and Lula ready to shoot the place up on a moment's notice — all this as Stephanie cries, "No guns! No guns!" She certainly has her hands full throughout this misadventure.

In a recent interview Evanovich noted that this novel in the series was "the sex book" because Stephanie's longtime, on-again-off-again romance with vice detective Joe Morelli finally ends in carnal fruition (after many previous interruptions). But there's plenty more to this novel than that. Four to Score is bound to score well with anyone who admires a gutsy, charming novel with as many belly laughs as there are engaging plot twists.

Tom Piccirilli is the author of the critically acclaimed supernatural novel Pentacle, as well as the dark suspense mysteries Shards and The Dead Past. His short fiction has appeared in many anthologies, including White House Horrors and Hot Blood: Fear the Fever.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Working for her bail bondsman cousin Vinnie, Stephanie Plum is hot on the trail of revenge-seeking waitress Maxine Nowicki, whose crimes include bail jumping, theft, and extortion. Someone is terrifying Maxine's friends, and those who have seen her are turning up dead. Also on the hunt for Maxine is Joyce Barnhardt, Stephanie's archenemy and rival bounty hunter. Stephanie's attitude never wavers - even when aided by crazy Grandma Mazur, ex-hooker and wannabe bounty hunter Lula, and transvestite rock musician Sally Sweet - and even when Stephanie makes an enemy whose deadly tactics escalate from threatening messages to firebombs.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Half-Hungarian, half-Italian and all-Jersey, Trenton's best-known bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum, is a raucous delight in this fast-paced sequel to Three to Get Deadly (1997). There's no such thing as a simple assignment for Stephanie. When Maxine Nowicki, charged with stealing her boyfriend's car, skips her court appearance, she's fair game to be hauled inno big challenge, thinks Stephanie. Wrong. Before the case is over, Stephanie will invade an Atlantic City casino with her intrepid allies: sneaker-shod Grandma Mazur; her colleague Lula, "a two-hundred pound black woman with blond baloney curls all dressed up like Cher on a bad day"; and Sally, a seven-foot transvestite rock singer. Although Stephanie is the bounty hunter, she's the only one of the quartet who isn't armed. She also loses another car and her apartment, moves in with handsome cop and longtime love interest, Joe Morelli (causing a stir in his family and hers), has several memorable run-ins with arch rival Joyce Barnhardt, discovers a corpse and, finally, catches her quarry. With her brash exterior and high emotionality, Stephanie Plum is a welcome antidote to suave professional PIs. The supporting cast members, eccentric and recognizable, are as entertaining as those devised by Westlake and Leonard.

AudioFile

Debi Mazar's streetwise and brash style bring to mind Stephanie Plum's big hair, short skirts, and smart mouth without even hearing her described. All of these attributes come in handy in Stephanie's job as a bounty hunter in Trenton, NJ, working for her (totally) unprincipled cousin Vinnie. Mazar narrates a little fast sometimes and doesn't always enunciate every word, but that's undoubtedly the way Stephanie talks too, and emphasizes the importance of setting to the story. In FOUR TO SCORE Atlantic City casinos and escalating threats to Stephanie's safety combine to give the listener a fast and exciting ride through the life of a woman trying to make a living as a bounty hunter. Mazar has a lot of fun, and so will the listener. M.A.M. ￯﾿ﾽ AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Washington Post

Fresh.

USA Today

Hilarious.

LA Times