Hardcore Twenty-Four by Janet Evanovich: A Swing-and-a-Miss from a Typically Reliable Source

Hardcore Twenty-Four

by Janet Evanovich
Series: Stephanie Plum, #24

Mass Market Paperback, 275 pg.
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017
Read: December 25, 2018

I dropped Lula off at the office and went to my parents’ house to mooch lunch. They live five minutes from the office, five minutes from Morelli’s house, and a time warp away from me. Even when my mom gets a new refrigerator or buys new curtains the house still feels precisely the same as when I was in school. It’s equally comforting and disturbing.

At this point the series feels a lot like Stephanie’s childhood home — they all feel the same, which is comforting and disturbing for the reader. This book ended up serving as a prime example of that.

I was feeling pretty good early on, when Connie was giving Stephanie a couple of new FTA’s to go pick up — they seemed equally interesting and potentially amusing. There’s a man who got upset by the poor service he received at a coffee shop and shot up a few cars in the parking lot, and a “pharmaceutical activist” who was arrested after blowing up a meth lab he was using in an abandoned building.

Actually, the travails of the slippery fifty-two year old who threw a tantrum and his eccentric wife is a pretty fun storyline. But the story of Zero Slick gets derailed right away by antics around his political activism and then leads into the major plot-line of the novel about a potential Zombie-outbreak — that both Zero and Lula seem to be overly focused on. That ties into a series of crimes where heads are being stolen from corpses at the various undertakers in town.

Yup. Zombies. Oh, and Diesel shows up. I was so glad that he wasn’t around anymore, it actually took some effort to remember who he was. Throw in an online boyfriend for Grandma Mazur and things are overfull with the zaniness.

I spent so much of the book just wanting it over — I did appreciate the story-line about the shooter — and a couple of other FTA’s that Stephanie picked up. I liked almost everything about Morelli for a change. The Ranger flirtation (and things beyond it), not to mention the Diesel flirting, the Zombie story (even when Evanovich tries to ground it in reality), and the Mazur stories just didn’t work for me. A little too crazy, a little too would=be comedic, without success.

I like the series, as often as I grumble about it — but this was beyond grumbling. I honestly had a hard time remembering why I keep reading these. They used to be funny, now I settle for amusing and almost charming. But I know Evanovich is capable of more, and I hope she gets back to form soon – even if it’s a diminished form. I’ll be back for Look Alive Twenty-Five, but my anticipation will be muted.

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