"Explosive Eighteen,' by Janet Evanovich

Stuff and Nonsense by Amy Cockram is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

It's no secret that I love Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series - I wrote about the previous one here - so it is unusual that, although I bought this book when it first came out, I hadn't got around to reading it yet.  Normally, when there is a new Stephanie Plum it jumps immediately to the top of my reading pile.  It's indicative of my spate of low library willpower that it has has taken me this long to get to it.

In the 18th in the series, Stephanie has returned early from a disastrous holiday in Hawaii that she doesn't want to talk about - and she especially doesn't want to talk about why she has a tan line on her ring finger.  Our hapless heroine finds a mysterious photo in her hand luggage, which some very dangerous people seem to want to get their hands on, and the man who sat next to her for part of the plane journey is found dead at LAX.  She also returns to work to find that one of the "skips" who she has to track down is her arch-nemesis Joyce Barnhardt, who she once discovered doing the nasty with her husband (now ex, understandably) on the dining table. 

I've been thinking in the past few months that one of my failings as a reader is that I read too quickly, and don't read deeply enough.  However, reading "Edge" and now this has made me realise that perhaps some things are meant to be read quickly - thrillers should have pace, and make you want to read quickly to find out what will happen next.  If your reading experience of a thriller drags, then maybe the book isn't doing what it set out to do.

I've just checked and there doesn't seem to be a release date for number 19, but I'm sure there will be another in the series that just seems to keep on going.  In some ways that is a good thing because I look forward to the new Stephanie Plum - it's hard to beat the series for a fun, entertaining ride -  but I would like to see the triangle between Stephanie, Ranger and Morelli come to a resolution....