Stephanie Plum
Created by Janet Evanovich

Working-class Jersey girl and former lingerie buyer STEPHANIE PLUM is a bond bailsma-er-bailsperson, working out of the blue collar "burg" in Trenton, New Jersey, where "houses and minds are proud to be narrow". And family ties tend to strangle. Rather than move in with her parents (and Grandma), she goes to work for her cousin Vinnie, the bail bondsman. And let's get it straight--Stephanie isn't exactly the toughest thing on earth, or even New Jersey. As she puts it, "I don't look at all like George Foreman. I'm more like Wonder Woman with a B-cup."

Poor Stephanie has a bad case of the hots for handsome vice cop Joe Morelli. As Stephanie puts it, "There are some men who enter a woman's life and screw it up forever. Joseph Morelli did this to me--not forever, but periodically." And somehow, Morelli always seems to be involved in Stephanie's cases. He may be all wrong for her, but what's a girl to do? As she puts it, she hasn't had "a good social orgasm since Reagan was in the White House."

Aiding and abetting Stephanie in her quest to track down and bring back those who have jumped the bond so generously put up by her cousin Vinnie are Ranger, the know-it-all, done-it-all hardcore, hardcase Cuban-American bounty hunter, and trigger-happy, thrill-seeking Gramma Mazur, Stephanie's grandmother.

But despite all the humour in the series, Stephanie regularly goes up against some pretty nasty types, and violence is as much a part of her life as any hardboiled anti-hero around. Margaret Cannon praises the series for its "smart and witty dialogue and dead-on characterization" and most readers will be similarly enchanted. A worthy addition to the Hardboiled Hall of Humour.

One of the most purely entertaining P.I.'s of the nineties. Recommended! Damn skippy!

By the way, at one point, rumors (or perhaps just wishful thinking) abounded about a possible movie adaptation of One For the Money, starring Sandra Bullock as our gal Steph. Estelle Getty (from TV's The Golden Girls) seems to be the people's choice to play Grandma. But there actually was a pilot done for the 2002 TV season. The pilot, alas, didn't get picked up. According to a reliable source who saw it when the network she worked for tested it, it was abysmal.

UNDER OATH

• "It's Get Shorty meets Cathy."
  -- Amazon Fishbowl's Bill Maher tries to summarize Stephanie's appeal, 2006)

NOVELS

• One for the Money (1994)..Buy this book
• Two for the Dough (1996)..Buy this book
• Three to Get Deadly (1997)..Buy this book
• Four To Score (1998)..Buy this book
• High Five (1999). Buy this book
• Hot Six (2000). Buy this book
• Seven Up (2001).....Buy this book
• Hard Eight (2002)...Buy this book
• To the Nines (2003). Buy this book
• Ten Big Ones (2004). Buy this book
• Eleven on Top (2005)... Buy this book
• Twelve Sharp (2006)... Buy this book
• Lean Mean Thirteen (2007) .. Buy this book
• Fearless Fourteen (2008) .. Buy this book

"BETWEEN THE NUMBERS"NOVELLAS*

• Visions Of Sugar Plums (2002)...Buy this book
• Plum Lovin' (2007).. Buy this book
• Plum Lucky (2008) ...Buy this book
• Plum Lucky (2009) .. Buy this book
  
  
  
• The "novellas" are becomingly increasingly novel-length.

SHORT STORIES

• "The Last Peep" (1997, The Plot Thickens; also 1999, First Cases 3)

RELATED LINKS

• The Janet Evanovich Page
  If you're plum crazy about Stephanie, and want to keep up to date on her and her creator, check out this page, created by Janet's daughter, Alex. You can also subscribe to Janet's newsletter, Plum News.

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Eryn R. who proudly boasts that "Stephanie is my hero," for some of the info included on this page, and to Nathalie, for the scoop.