Product Description

Stephanie Plum is the lone witness to a gang executed robbery and cop shooting. There's a contract issued for her head and a California-based killer looking to fill that contract. The tenth Stephanie Plum novel is filled with Evanovich's trademark high stakes, high adventure, high wit, and sly comedy.

Product Details

• Published on: 2004-06-22
• Formats: Abridged, Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Amazon.co.uk Review
The latest of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum adventures, Ten Big Ones places New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie in rather more jeopardy than usual. She has inconvenienced a local street gang and finds herself with a price on her head; the contract killer known as the Junkman has a taste for torture as well as murder, and she is the last victim on his list. As usual, she finds herself caught between her regular boyfriend, cop Morelli, and the dangerous and charming Ranger; as usual, the main plot goes on in the intervals between her regular rounds of catching up with bail defaulters and delivering them to court, and her involvement with her eccentric Hungarian and Italian relatives.

There are few surprises here--Janet Evanovich is good and funny on the subtle variations in New Jersey's suburbs and the differences between good and bad neighbourhoods, and she has always had the knack of constructing knockabout scenes of slapstick and farce. If at times she drifts towards the formulaic and stale, this is only really evident in retrospect. As one reads the book, she is as entertaining as always. --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

A decent effort.
Ten Big Ones, the tenth novel in the Stephanie Plum series , is yet another funny, action packed and fast paced ride on the wild side.Unfortunately Ten Big Ones does not measure up to earlier efforts by Janet Evanovich, and in my opinion it is too short and even though the ending is very interesting, it seemed awfully rushed to me.Ranger, the best character in the Plum novels, is not in the book for close to 150 pages whereas Lula and Stephanie are left to carry the story along.The villains are good and Morelli is coming on nicely but Ten Big Ones is not a great novel.Hard Eight, in my estimation the best Stephanie Plum novel to date has all the elements Ten Big Ones is lacking;Lots of Ranger, mysterious plotlines and not stupid forced laughs, bundles of Albert Kloughn and the characters each get a fair share of the narrative.Ten Big Ones is a funny, light read but isn't the best Plum novel.I hope Metro Girl, the new Evanovich franchise will be more exciting than Ten Big Ones...

The Perfect Plum!
After finding "To the Nines" to be an almost perfect Plum, I was wondering how Ms. Evanovich could hope to match that wonderful book. You may recall that I found the mystery of "To the Nines" a little too easy to solve in the last 60 pages. I am delighted to report that Ms. Evanovich has written a perfect Plum this time. What an accomplishment!

To be this good, Ms. Evanovich must have gone back and examined every review she has ever received . . . and looked for ways to improve her writing.

Ten Big Ones has generous doses of all your favorite characters form the earlier books including Grandma Mazur, Lula, Morelli, Ranger, Connie, Valerie, Albert Kloughn, her Mom and Dad, and Sally Sweet . . . along with delightful cameos by such stalwarts as Vinnie Plum, the usual eye-rolling members of the Trenton PD, and Ranger's crew.

Ten Big Ones has more bounty hunts in it than ever before, and Stephanie plays a more complete role in trying to solve everyone's problems . . . not just bring in a felon for a body receipt.

Cars play a big role. There's romance. There's action. There's threat. There's family drama. It's marvelous!

Unlike other books in the series, you could begin with this one and still understand what is going on with few problems. The opening has a wonderful reintroduction of Stephanie and her life. But this book is so good, it will spoil you for the others. So please go back and start with One for the Money if you haven't read the others.

This book builds around being in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . and lets events develop from there.

Unlike many of the other books in the series, this one seems to have a more serious theme: What is the correct role for a single woman in a dangerous, demanding society? Stephanie craves the action, doesn't want to be "protected" too much . . . but does want to survive the experience. She's also torn in other ways, and the emotional development of her personality is quite interesting in this book.

But the humor is what I liked best about the book. The characterizations and descriptions are wonderful for adding to that humor.

I thought that the comic elements of the scenes were beautifully constructed. Each scene was more complex than I expected, and the complexity left a reward of a more detailed understanding of the characters as well as heartier laughs along the way. No one does comedy better!

As I finished the book, I realized that there's more than one way to get things done. But we do need to be persistent . . . so that eventually we get our man or woman!

I can hardly wait to see where Stephanie goes form here.

The Perfect Plum!
After finding "To the Nines" to be an almost perfect Plum, I was wondering how Ms. Evanovich could hope to match that wonderful book. You may recall that I found the mystery of "To the Nines" a little too easy to solve in the last 60 pages. I am delighted to report that Ms. Evanovich has written a perfect Plum this time. What an accomplishment!

To be this good, Ms. Evanovich must have gone back and examined every review she has ever received . . . and looked for ways to improve her writing.

Ten Big Ones has generous doses of all your favorite characters form the earlier books including Grandma Mazur, Lula, Morelli, Ranger, Connie, Valerie, Albert Kloughn, her Mom and Dad, and Sally Sweet . . . along with delightful cameos by such stalwarts as Vinnie Plum, the usual eye-rolling members of the Trenton PD, and Ranger's crew.

Ten Big Ones has more bounty hunts in it than ever before, and Stephanie plays a more complete role in trying to solve everyone's problems . . . not just bring in a felon for a body receipt.

Cars play a big role. There's romance. There's action. There's threat. There's family drama. It's marvelous!

Unlike other books in the series, you could begin with this one and still understand what is going on with few problems. The opening has a wonderful reintroduction of Stephanie and her life. But this book is so good, it will spoil you for the others. So please go back and start with One for the Money if you haven't read the others.

This book builds around being in the wrong place at the wrong time . . . and lets events develop from there.

Unlike many of the other books in the series, this one seems to have a more serious theme: What is the correct role for a single woman in a dangerous, demanding society? Stephanie craves the action, doesn't want to be "protected" too much . . . but does want to survive the experience. She's also torn in other ways, and the emotional development of her personality is quite interesting in this book.

But the humor is what I liked best about the book. The characterizations and descriptions are wonderful for adding to that humor.

I thought that the comic elements of the scenes were beautifully constructed. Each scene was more complex than I expected, and the complexity left a reward of a more detailed understanding of the characters as well as heartier laughs along the way. No one does comedy better!

As I finished the book, I realized that there's more than one way to get things done. But we do need to be persistent . . . so that eventually we get our man or woman!

I can hardly wait to see where Stephanie goes form here.