Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby Series #1) [Mass Market Paperback]

Janet Evanovich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 27, 2005

Alexandra (Barney) Barnaby roars onto the Miami Beach scene in hot pursuit of her missing baby brother, "Wild" Bill. Leave it to the maverick of the family to get Barney involved with high-speed car chases, a search for sunken treasure, and Sam Hooker, a NASCAR driver who’s good at revving a woman's engine.

Engaged in a deadly race, Bill has "borrowed" Hooker's sixty-five-foot Hatteras and sailed off into the sunset...just when Hooker has plans for the boat. Hooker figures he'll attach himself to Barney and maybe run into scumbag Bill. And better yet, maybe he'll get lucky in love with Bill's sweetie pie sister.

The pedal will have to go to metal if Barney and Hooker want to be the first to cross the finish line, save Bill, Hooker's boat...and maybe the world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Just because I know how to change a guy's oil doesn't mean I want to spend the rest of my life on my back, staring up his undercarriage." From the word go, Evanovich delivers her usual goods, albeit in a different vehicle. After 10 Stephanie Plum novels, each more successful than the last, Evanovich introduces Alexandra Barnaby, aka Barney. Barney hails from Baltimore rather than New Jersey, but she's from the same slice of working-class life as Stephanie; she donned mechanic's overalls in her father's garage during summer breaks from college. Her younger brother, Wild Bill, shares her passion for cars, and now he's disappeared from Miami, along with NASCAR star Sam Hooker's boat, the Happy Hooker. Evanovich doesn't mind showing her romance roots, as Barney and Sam start off snarling at each other; as any reader can tell, they have to team up (a) to save Bill and (b) to enjoy delicious sex. As in the Plum books, plot takes a back seat to riffs, roughups and dialogue—and in the last lies the book's most notable distinction. If Stephanie bids fair to be New Jersey's Dorothy Parker, Barney is Baltimore's echo of Robert Parker. Conversation is terse and coded, full of sexual innuendo, with a high premium on toss-away lines uttered under duress. Despite the amazing quantity of physical jeopardy, there's little tension; it's all about hanging out with Metro Girl and NASCAR Guy—which may be just what millions of Evanovich fans will want.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School–A comic misadventure from the start, this mystery is a good combination of light thriller and fast-paced action. Alex Barnaby receives a late-night call from her brother that ends in mid-sentence with a woman screaming in the background. Being the dependable sister that she is, she catches the next flight down to Miami to find out what happened. Alex soon discovers that her brother has gone missing with a recent Cuban immigrant who may or may not know the location of a warhead and a fortune in gold. She cuts down the inept bad guys with her wit and a few well-placed accidental kicks and moves. For fans of the author's "Stephanie Plum" series, the book is a letdown as there are moments when readers have to suspend disbelief and accept contrived plot twists. Evanovich is better at dialogue than description, which may frustrate some seasoned readers, but the dialogue is what keeps the story moving and is, ultimately, the novel's saving grace.–Erin Dennington, Chantilly Regional Library, VA --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: HarperTorch; 256 edition (September 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060584025
• ISBN-13: 978-0060584023
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 4.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (265 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #58,031 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Janet Evanovich is the #1 bestselling author of the Stephanie Plum novels, twelve romance novels, the Alexandra Barnaby novels and graphic novels, Wicked Appetite (the first book in the Lizzy and Diesel series,) and How I Write: Secrets of a Bestselling Author.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, November 5, 2004

By 

L O'connor (richmond, surrey United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby Series #1) (Hardcover)

Alex Barnaby is worried when her brother Bill, who is working in Miami, disappears along with his girlfriend Maria. She finds herself reluctantly joining forces with Hooker, a handsome racing driver, whose boat Bill has stolen. Together they set out to find the missing pair, helped and hindered by a variety of other characters.

This is quite a good story with some amusing moments, but I did not find it nearly as funny or exciting as the Stepahine Plum novels, none of the characters interested me very much, and the heroine, Alex, seemed insipid compared to Stephanie.

If you haven't read any Janet Evanovich books before, my advice would be to skip this one and go for the Plums, they are very much better than this.

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A-Team Meets Scooby Doo, March 4, 2005

By 

Bryan Gilmer "Author, FELONIOUS JAZZ, a thriller" (Durham, NC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby Series #1) (Hardcover)

Scooby elements: A cache of gold bars! A treasure map! A dastardly, swarthy villain who drives around in a limo with henchmen saying things like, "Very well. It's only a matter of time." Young woman who finds her brother's apartment ransacked, but doesn't call the cops -- she and her friends solve the mystery themselves!

Bad '80s TV drama (Riptide, Remington Steele, A-Team) elements: Soviet weapon at large! Outwitting doofy, incompetent G-men! Car crashes! A secret warehouse where the bad guys load stuff into 18-wheelers! Rappelling in through the roof! Scuba-diving for treasure! An exploding helicopter! Thousands of rounds fired, but people are only superficially wounded!

I'll shut up about the two dozen continuity problems and ludicrous plot cheats (well, in a minute): A Nascar driver and a guy named Wild Bill weigh only 360 pounds together, and can be lifted into a car unconscious, handcuffed together by a skinny blonde woman and a willowy gay guy? An elderly woman is such a good shot with a handgun that she can hit one guy in the foot and one guy in the arm because she just wants to wound them? A fishing boat running the Cuban blockade sinks and is missing for decades, then turns up at the bottom of a HARBOR? Almost made it!

And the characters are totally stock: The hot, tomoboyish young blonde woman in the short skirt, the homosexual, Burberry-wearing, exfoliating, interior designer queen (whom the hero just happens to know from childhood 1,600 miles away), the Texas race-car driver, the bumbling federal agents.

This actual quote from the first-person narrator on page 254 sums up the book: "Good thing I watch a lot of television. If it wasn't for television, I wouldn't have any ideas at all. Sometimes I worried that I didn't have a signle thought in my head that wasn't already a cliche'."

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Shame on you, Janet..., January 2, 2006

By 

Bruce A. Smith "Book Lover" (Croghan, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby Series #1) (Hardcover)

As a die-hard NASCAR fan, I am not overly pleased that Janet "used" my passion to sell a less than mediocre story and make money off of me...shame on you, Janet.

My personal opinion is: This book is nothing other than another quick "put-em-out-and-sell-em" attempt that, unfortunately, seems to be the latest approach for many of our best-selling authors of late (can anyone spell James Patterson?).

The most discouraging thing is that I was sold on the NASCAR-GUY connnection...not impressed at all. I'm sure many others bought into this idea of a NASCAR themed book and it really had absolutely nothing to add to the storyline. Janet could've made her male hero an NFL/NHL/World Soccer League/World Wrestling Federation character and nothing would've changed...sorry, but just not impressed.

I may have giggled once or twice, but there simply was little to no SUBSTANCE and a whole lotta fluff here. Perhaps if I were on a beach in the tropics, I could've written this off as a pleasant summer read...unfortunately, I read this thing during the mid of winter in Northern New York and I was left feeling as cold as the air that seeps through my 30-year-old single-pane windows...

Sorry, Janet, but my money's much better spent on a couple of trackside tickets in Dover and Martinsville where REAL NASCAR stories unfold.