Twisted Twenty-Six by Janet Evanovich is, you guessed it, the 26th book in the Stephanie Plum Series.
In case you’ve never read a Stephanie Plum book, here’s the gist. Stephanie is a thirty-something bail bonds officer, aka bounty hunter, in the Trenton suburb where she was raised. She’s not great at her job, but she is persistent. The cast includes her cop boyfriend Joe Morelli, her sometimes lover and security expert Ranger, her best friend and partner in crime Lula, and her parents and grandmother.
When we last saw Stephanie, she was freaking out because Grandma Mazur had boarded a plane with mafioso Jimmy Rosolli. When I finished book 25, I thought 26 would focus on Grandma’s marriage and the Plums trying to convince Grandma that Jimmy was a bad guy. Nope.
“Some men enter a woman’s life and screw it up forever. Jimmy Rosolli did this to my Grandma Mazur. Not forever, but for an afternoon last week when he married her in the casino at Atlantis and dropped dead forty-five minutes later.”
Stephanie and Lula capture a few FTAs (people who skipped bail), but the book mostly focuses on all the people who are after Grandma Mazur because they think she inherited Jimmy’s money and his keys. The keys are somehow related to Jimmy and his friends’ mafia-related business. His business partners won’t say what the keys are to or why they are important, but they’re willing to kidnap and terrorize Grandma to get the keys. Word gets around that the keys are valuable and Grandma has them, so now lots of people want them. Unfortunately for Grandma and the Plum family, no one believes Grandma that Jimmy didn’t give her the keys or tell her where he hid them. Naturally, hijinks ensue.
I absolutely love Grandma Mazur so I was thrilled to read a book focused on her. She’s wacky and delightful and I’m very glad she’s not my grandmother. Lula, as always, was fabulous. Mom and Dad Plum got some character development, which was a nice surprise. Stephanie was very unhappy about her job throughout most of the book, and while that’s not unusual it does feel like it’s building toward something. I found that intriguing. Most importantly, the book made me laugh out loud several times.
Overall I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to all Plum fans.