Janet Evanovich has over the past couple of years joined Barbara Mertz (aka Barbara Michaels and Elizabeth Peters), Martha Grimes and the late Georgette Heyer as one of my favorite writers of mysteries, for lack of a better term. Michaels/Peters specializes in touches of the supernatural and the incomparable Egyptological Amelia Peabody tales; Grimes has some of the most vivid characters in the genre in Richard Jury, Melrose Plant and their frenemies; and Heyer's "cozies" portray an England between the wars that was murderous, genteely spiteful and often comical.

None of them has created a series character as sidesplittingly funny, however, as Evanovich's bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum, the terror of Trenton, New Jersey. Beginning in 1994 with ONE FOR THE MONEY and most recently including the aforenamed FEARLESS FOURTEEN, Steph, her cop/lover Joe Morelli,her family (Evanovich says she wants to be exactly like Grandma Mazur when she grows up), her friend and coworker Lula, and the mysterious Ranger have rolled from crisis to crisis and sold millions of books in the process.

The newest Steph adventure begins with Morelli's cousin Dom getting out of prison, where he served nine years of a fifteen year sentence for bank robbery. The money was never located, and three of the four men who were in on the robbery seem to think it's hidden under the floor of Morelli's basement, which he has concreted since Dom went to prison. Dom, meanwhile, KNOWS that there is a key piece of the puzzle at Morelli's, and is threatening to kill Morelli for A) conning Aunt Rose into leaving the house to him instead of Dom and B) for, according to Dom, fathering his sister Loretta's son, a morose teen who goes by the name Zook.

Steph has more problems than that, as always; Ranger, the devastatingly sexy head of his own security firm and man of mystery, has hired her to help him provide security for an aging entertainer who uses the single name Brenda and who is only appearing in Trenton because, as her assistant points out, they no longer want her in New York. Meanwhile Lula, the retired 'ho who has become Steph's sidekick in the skip business, has pulled a fast one and gotten herself engaged to Tank, Ranger's second in command. A good part of the fun stems from her attempts to plan a wedding.

Things get really hairy when Loretta disappears, apparently kidnapped by the other three bank robbers, and two of those three turn up dead.
Fun fun fun and the occasional scare, an exploding dye pack that leaves Steph, Lula and Brenda--who takes on a gig as the host of a local Crimestoppers show--looking like Smurfette's triplets, and a van that blows up, make this one rollicking read.

I think Evanovich, like me, prefers Ranger to the relatively settled Joe Morelli; her descriptions of Ranger are more detailed and sexy. When Steph first joins him at Brenda's hotel, she says that in his black suit, shirt and tie (he always wears black), he'd make the cover if GQ were to do a feature on contract killers; later, when he shows up in a black-on-black tux, she remarks to herself that Ranger in a tux is almost as good as Ranger naked (which she first saw back in HARD EIGHT).

Steph, in comparing Morelli, her main squeeze, and Ranger, says that Morelli is husband and father material and Ranger--isn't. Now there's nothing wrong with guys who are husband and father material; after all, some of the sexiest men alive are husbands and fathers. But it's pretty plain that Steph finds Ranger's aura of danger more than slightly attractive.

So do we. Or at least, me.

Can't wait for the next one. Until then, if anybody comes looking for me, I'll be in a corner somewhere with a book.