Janet Evanovich is one of the better known names in the cop/action/mystery novels genre.  She is probably best known for her Stephanie Plum series, the numbered books.  So at the airport once, I got one of them, kind of like why I read a Patricia Cornwell novel.  And as with Ms. Cornwell, I don’t get it.

I can understand part of the appeal of Explosive Eighteen, which I assume is part of the appeal of all of her books.  But really, in my mind, it’s not enough to recommend that you read them.

First, the number in the title does not seem to come from anything in the story, it’s just the 18th book.  That’s just not fair.  “Explosive” doesn’t even relate to the content.

Then there is Stephanie herself.  She’s a tough, take-charge woman, which is the part I think accounts for most of her appeal.  But she’s completely incompetent.  I assume she’s been a bounty hunter throughout the series, and yet, she seems to be really bad at it.  In fact, she doesn’t seem to have any outstanding skills at all.  In this book, she’s constantly being bailed out by her mother, who does her laundry and supplies food when Stephie is out.  Oh, and she borrows a car from them.  She needed one, you see, because her own is stolen three times … by the same guy!

And she routinely has to be rescued by one of the two men in her life.  And those guys.  I don’t think I’m the only woman out there who really cannot relate to a woman having two gorgeous hunks fighting for her and willing to do anything to rescue her.

But what kind of seasoned bounty hunter needs to be rescued so often?  Don’t you learn certain skills in order to survive and thrive in the business?  And who among us would put up with having someone we very much dislike consistently breaking into our home and tell us they’re not leaving and we need to go shopping, we’re out of wine.  Maybe Stephanie doesn’t call the police because she doesn’t want them to know how bad she is at her job.  That I’d buy.

And she wants a witness to give her some information, so she allows the woman to make a Crayola-colored bird’s nest of her hair.  As with letting the woman camp out at her apartment, she just doesn’t see any other options.  Seriously?

And then there is the entirely dissatisfying ending.  This bounty she was trying to bring in at the start of the book, she just happens to cross paths with at the very end of it.  She nails him, turns him in, and gets so much dough from the bounty that she’s rolling in money.  That’s like introducing the guy whodunnit in the last chapter.  It’s just wrong.

Along the way, we meet Lula, a character who starts out to be really fun.  She’s a former ho’ and still uses the same wardrobe and the same attitude.  Of course, she gets all the good lines.  When her stomach hurts, she blames it on the last donut she ate.  “You ate ten!”  “Yeah, and none of the others bothered me.  I’m telling you it was that last donut.”

When Stephanie hits one of the bounties with a stun gun, he falls face-first into Lula’s lap.  She complains, “He got his nose in my lady parts.  Not that I haven’t been in this situation before, but there’s a time and a place for everything, you see what I’m saying?”

Larger-than-life characters can be a lot of fun, but about half way through, she becomes larger than is believable, even for a novel.  She is obese, but if she really ate everything the author has her eating, she’d be too big to walk.  And yet, when they have to scale a fence, it’s Stephanie who tries to hoist Lula over.  She doesn’t succeed, but still…  It’s ridiculous.