December 2000

One for the Money, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1995.

Two for the Dough, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1996.

Three to Get Deadly, Scribner, 1997.

Four to Score, London: Macmillan, 1998.

High Five, New York: St Martins Press, 1999.

Hot Six, New York: St Martins Press, 2000.

See also http://www.evanovich.com

     Do you find it hard to find a really good trashy read? You know -- pure escapism for when the brain is worn out and the soul needs a hug? Janet Evanovich may have just what you're looking for. Her 'Stephanie Plum' novels revolve around the adventures of a female bond enforcement agent and combine crime, detection, romance, lust, humour and chicken soup in more-or-less equal quantities, and in no particular sequence.

     The stories have a regular cast of about a dozen characters that one follows compulsively through the (soon-to-be) seven-book series, in much the same way that one becomes addicted to those in television soap operas. Most important of all though, Evanovich's fantasy fiction accomplishes what so little other of this genre can -- it does not (with one exception) degenerate into the idealised patriarchal discourse that is distasteful to so many women readers.

     Evanovich started her career as a romance writer for Bantam and her first Plum novel, One for the Money, does reflect, rather unsatisfactorily, this background. Stephanie Plum is initially portrayed as very inept at whatever she tries to do. Her successes are due either to luck, or to the intervention of one Joe Morelli. Morelli is a drop-dead gorgeous hunk of womanising cop, as arrogant as Austen's D'Arcy, as dependable as a tom-cat, and as a feminist, I found the subtext between the two characters to be offensive.

However, towards the end of the second story, Two for the Dough, Evanovich has the 30 year old Plum remind herself that:

the Morellis were notorious for their violent, alcohol-fueled tempers and for their ability to sweet-talk a woman into an abusive relationship. I knew some of this firsthand. When Morelli had charmed the pants off me fourteen years ago, he hadn't been abusive, but he hadn't been kind either. (234)

So, Evanovich reassured me that she was not about to glamorise domestic violence nor ignore its roots, and in all the subsequent novels, Stephanie Plum emerges as a capable woman with a mind all her own. Her 'luck' is recast as chutzpah or lateral thinking, and her continuing relationship with Joe Morelli is governed by the conflict between her will and her hormones -- but never does she lose her head. Put your feet up, relax and enjoy!