Product Description

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum thinks she’s going after an easy FTA: a senior citizen charged with smuggling contraband cigarettes. But when she and Lula show up at his house, they get more than they bargained for – a corpse in the woodshed and an old man on the lam. Stephanie’s mind is on other matters, however, because she has two proposals to consider: vice cop Joe Morelli is proposing marriage, and fellow bounty hunter Ranger is proposing a single perfect night...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53110 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Stephanie Plum, Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter star of Seven Up, is good at her job partly because of her infinite resourcefulness and partly because her world is one in which everyone on all sides of the law knows at least one member of her extended family. In this, the seventh offering in the Stephanie Plum series, she is chasing an elderly mobster who used to go out with her grandmother. Eddie DeChooch, though, is no less formidable for being old and he constantly eludes Stephanie, the police who want to question him about the corpse Stephanie found in his garage and Joyce, her arch-rival in the bail bond enforcement business. Stephanie's crowded social life gets ever more intense with her family pressing her to name a date for her wedding to Joe, her unreliable cop fiancé, her drastically attractive colleague Ranger, asking her for a night of bliss, her horribly perfect sister Valerie back from California with a down on men and the idiot stoners Moonman and Doug wandering around in super-hero costumes. Evanovich constantly ups the comic ante; DeChooch and his sidekicks manage to be menacingly obnoxious while remaining credibly characters in a farce. The social observation of families is as acute as ever while never passing up the chance for snappy one-liners. Above all, Stephanie herself remains a delightful tone of voice--a heroine considerably braver than she ever lets herself notice and rather smarter an investigator than she or anyone else gives her credit for being. --Roz Kaveney

About the Author
Janet Evanovich now lives in New Hampshire but, like Stephanie Plum, grew up in New Jersey. She has won major crime fiction awards for her Stephanie Plum novels: ONE FOR THE MONEY was presented with the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Award and the Dilys Award, TWO FOR THE DOUGH won the CWA Last Laugh Award and THREE TO GET DEADLY was awarded the CWA Silver Dagger for 1997. Her web site address is www.evanovich.com.

Customer Reviews

Stephanie buys a pig's heart and tries on a wedding gown
Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter working for her lecherous cousin Vinnie in Trenton, NJ. Klutzy Stephanie often mistakes her can of hair set for pepper spray, and forgets to charge her stun gun. It's a wonder she captures anybody.

HOT SIX ended with undercover vice cop Joe Morelli proposing marriage - sort of.

In SEVEN UP, Vinnie assigns Plum to seize Eddie DeChooch, who's jumped bail on a charge of cigarette smuggling. But Eddie refuses to be brought in until he finds something he's lost, and he's willing to resort to gunplay to make his point. But Stephanie hates guns - she keeps her .38 in a cookie jar. And what has DeChooch lost? All we and Stephanie know is that it has to be kept cold. In the meantime, Plum must mentally grasp Morelli's marriage proposal. They've an on-again, off-again relationship ever since Joe took her virginity on the floor behind the pastry counter of the bakery where she worked at eighteen. Mrs. Plum, whose nightmare is her daughter as an Old Maid, takes Stephanie out to try on wedding gowns when the latter, in a desperate moment at the Plum family dinner table with guest Joe, blurts out "August!". Will it happen, you think?

Now seven novels into the Stephanie Plum series, it's evident that Evanovich writes to a fairly rigid formula, at least so far: Plum gets an ostensibly easy assignment that goes terribly wrong when her quarry proves elusive and one or more bodies are discovered; Stephanie has car problems; Stephanie must temporarily put up with an eccentric roommate; Stephanie dotes on her pet hamster, Rex; Stephanie is followed by suspicious characters; Stephanie takes her Grandma Mazur to viewings at local funeral parlors; Stephanie's sidekick in dysfunctional fugitive apprehension is Lula, ex-ho and Vinnie's file clerk; Stephanie has the hots for fellow bounty hunter, the mysterious Ranger. Whatever fantastical situations and characters the author additionally creates seem to be outlandish for their own sakes rather than maturing her heroine's persona. While that's not necessarily bad, it does lend each book a strain of boring predictability. The author needs to expand Stephanie's horizons. And I'm becoming increasingly annoyed that Plum's long-suffering parents remain ciphers.

Mind you, I still enjoy Stephanie's adventures immensely. But I'm unwilling to award any more five-star ratings unless Evanovich provides something surprising or very clever.

Accidental girl power meets crime novel - hilarious results!
There's a standard formula to all the Stephanie Plum novels, but Janet Evanovich manages to keep producing witty, page-turning, fun filled crime tales. Unsurprisingly, this is the seventh in the series - you could read this as a stand alone novel, but I would strongly recommend starting with 'One for the Dough' and working your way through - they are addictive!

The central characters provide endless entertainment: the unstoppable Grandma Mazur, Stephanie's dispairing mother, the larger than life Lula, the hapless Mooner and Dougie and of course the love interest - will it be Morelli or Ranger?

Its a great tale of accidental girl power - the bounty hunter who, with the help of some great (but mostly eccentric) friends and relatives and a lot of luck (aka Ranger), manages to get herself into and out of a whole lot of trouble.

Everything about these novels are surreal, and this style, along with the unique plots make Janet Evanovich novels stand out from the rest. If you liked the previous six novels - Seven Up won't let you down.

A curate's egg - good in parts
Others will describe the plot. This review is for quality of the plot and dialogue.

If you are new to the Evanovich Stephanie Plum series start at One for the Money and then go on to Two for the dough. Seven up is funny, but not as good as the earlier books.

There are some laugh out loud moments, but the story isn't the strongest and it does feel as if Evanovich was working to a deadline so it isn't as polished as some of her other works.

Still worth buying, I wouldn't pay for a hardback copy.