Fearless Fourteen (Stephanie Plum, No. 14) (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "IN MY MIND, my kitchen is filled with crackers and cheese, roast chicken leftovers, farm fresh eggs, and coffee beans ready to grind..." (more)
Key Phrases: fourth partner, bonds office, wood elves, Stanley Zero, Allen Gratelli, Aunt Rose (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Lorelei King returns to Trenton, N.J., to continue the misadventures of Stephanie Plum, intermittently successful bounty hunter. King is one of many to voice Janet Evanovich's successful series, but her voice can be heard above the crowd, especially when she's bringing the more colorful characters to life. Her former prostitute Lula can tear down walls with the force of her personality, and King gives professional security specialist (read mercenary) Ranger the measured tones of one who is always in control. Stephanie spends much of the book blue from a briefcase dye bomb. King's Plum accepts her blueness and responds to the reactions with indignity, ruefulness and eventually resignation. In addition to established favorites, Evanovich has thrown into the mix a 60-ish singer trying to hang onto fame who gives King plenty of scope for her Southern side. Fearless Fourteen becomes peerless fourteen with narrator King at the helm. A St. Martin's hardcover (Reviews, May 19). (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist

Our heroine, the irrepressible bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, finds herself watching over a goth teen called Zook, who is heavily into gaming, after his mom can’t make bail and disappears (or has been kidnapped). A lot of people think there is stolen money buried in or near Officer Morelli’s little house—that’s Steph’s Morelli, the cop who is her number-one boyfriend most of the time, or at least when the entrancing Ranger isn’t nearby. The money is the reason behind Zook’s mom’s disappearance, and it’s the tie that binds Evanovich’s various plotlines, which carom about endlessly, not always resolving. Questions abound: Are Steph’s sidekick, the plus-size Lula, and Ranger’s man Tank really engaged? Ranger is working security for a fading but brassy pop star: How does Steph manage to get into and out of her reality show? Can Zook and his sidekicks protect Morelli’s house—and Stephanie—with their homegrown weaponry (think potatoes as missiles)? Where else but Evanovich’s fourteenth novel can a line like “it’s raining money and popsicles!” actually make sense? Fans will be delighted, but others, who stumble into the series at this advanced point, may find themselves starved for backstory, so much so that they may need to go all the way back to One for the Money (1994). --GraceAnne A. DeCandido

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (June 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312349513
• ISBN-13: 978-0312349516
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (515 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,654 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 14 in The Stephanie Plum Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

406 of 479 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sláinte agus Saol Agat!, June 18, 2008

By	Cherise Everhard (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I'm not going to give a book synopsis. What I am going to do is say goodbye to one of my all time favorite series. The last couple of books have been horribly silly and ridiculous; this one was no exception.

The characters I once loved and looked forward all year to hearing from are barely visible. The little quirks that used to make them unique and funny are now taking over their entire persona making them slightly moronic. The dialogue that used to be naturally witty seems forced and contrived. Jokes, gags and antics that once made me laugh have been recycled and reused so much, it's sad.

No one in this series is growing or getting anywhere, they are all just going in circles. I want Stephanie to get better at the bounty hunter thing; I want her to grow up. I don't want her or Ranger or Joe to change, but after so many years you expect SOMETHING of substance to happen.

I barely got through this book. Janet has provided hours of entertainment for me in the past with this series and for that I will always be grateful. But I can't for the life of me see myself shelling out the big bucks for these hardcover books filled with drivel anymore.

I hope that Janet rethinks what she has been doing with this series lately and gives it a much needed overhaul. The last couple of books have seemed rushed and phoned in, a huge departure from the earlier books in the series.

My days of rushing to the bookstore on release dates are over. When book 15 comes out I will wait to read reviews, first. If the reviews make the book look promising, maybe I will read it. But from where I sit now, I don't see me opening another `new' Plum adventure. I will reread the older and much better books in the series if I need a Plum fix.

Cherise Everhard, June 2008

87 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not her best..., June 18, 2008

By	Cynthia K. Robertson (beverly, new jersey USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich is the latest in her Stephanie Plum series. I thought much of it was amusing and there was at least one good belly-laugh (where I had tears rolling down my cheeks). But overall, I think Fearless Fourteen is a bit of a stretch--even for Stephanie Plum.

Plum is a bounty hunter from Trenton, NJ and as usual, her life is utter chaos. She ends up babysitting the teenaged son of a skip, Zook. Zook is addicted to an interactive Internet game called Minionfire. He also likes to spray paint everything. Ranger (a fellow bounty hunter and owner of a security firm) hires Stephanie to help babysit an aging singer, Brenda, who acts like a diva and is inclined to get into trouble. Plum also finds herself in the middle of a 10-year-old $9 million unsolved bank robbery, and it appears that the money might be somewhere in boyfriend Joe Morelli's house. Brenda decides to start a reality show and follows Plum around as she's trying to do her job. And when things couldn't get any worse, Lula is engaged to boyfriend, Tank, and is driving Plum crazy with wedding plans. All of these situations play out with the usual Evanovich zaniness. Unfortunately, I think there was just way too much going on here--especially toward the end.

Evanovich is skillful at describing life in Trenton. Of a fast-food restaurant, she writes "Cluck-in-a-Bucket is a zoo on Sunday. It's the lunch of choice for the lazy, the fat, the salt-starved, the emotionally injured, the families on budgets, the cholesterol-deprived and the remaining ten percent of the population who just want a piece of chicken." My favorite character (next to Plum) is Lula, "former `ho, turned bonds office file clerk and wheelman. She's a plus-size black woman who likes to squash herself into too small clothes featuring animal print and spandex. Lula's cup runneth over from head to toe." I'm glad that Evanovich has turned Lula into a regular.

Although I don't think this is Evanovich's best Plum book, I still enjoyed reading the exploits of Stephanie. When I need a break from serious female detectives and private investigators including Kinsey Millhone, Sharon McCone, Nevada Barr, Kathy Mallory and Temperance Brennan, reading about Stephanie and Lula is like watching "Lucy and Ethel" on television.

48 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "NOTHING LIKE A GROWN MAN'S "FIRST-PLUM"!", June 20, 2008

By	Rick Shaq Goldstein "Rick Shaq Goldstein" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I have never read any book by Janet Evanovich before. So my review is based solely on this book. Unlike 3/4 `s of the 83 reviews currently posted on this site that say they're never going to read this author's books again... or her work has gone steadily downhill since the early installments... or certain characters didn't have as much visibility as they used to... or Stephanie Plum should be put to sleep permanently... I just cannot make any comments like that since I have never read any other Stephanie Plum book to compare it to. But please believe me... I feel your pain. If you simply changed the name of the author to James Patterson in this review I would be saying the same things with the same powerful venom! I too stated to the world a few months ago that I would stop reading Patterson's books for the same reason's formerly loyal Evanovich fans have said they would stop reading her books. But once again, since I don't have the same heartfelt experience with Plum that you do... It might be interesting for you to get the response of a heretofore "virginal" Plum reader.

Being a single guy, when Ms. Plum introduced herself to me by way of telling me that "she kept her Smith & Wesson in the cookie jar, her Oreos in the microwave, a jar of peanut butter in the over-the-counter cupboard, and "BEER" and olives in the refrigerator"... I have to admit I was falling in love. (The hamster food was a negative. But the "BEER" & FIREARMS easily outweighed that small negative!) I enjoyed the nutty, bulbous breasted, sidekick Lula. Her gold tooth with a diamond chip added to the visual image, though I thought the biggest shortcoming in the book was the constant babbling about the wedding to the dupe of a boyfriend Tank, that went on and on with no logic, and then just disappeared into the ether with no culmination nor explanation. The whacky conglomeration of bit characters has some hits as well as misses. With individuals ranging from a stalker foreseeing an attack by an "evil flying pizza", to a former high school stoner who is now a witless adult addicted to the word "dude", and a teenager with the nickname of "Zook" (The second biggest strikeout in the plot!) who is allowed to spray paint people's houses and cars with absolutely no punishment. Perhaps the best "bit" character with un-mined potential was Grandma who was not given enough time to shine with lines like: "Zook", that's a pip of a name. I wish I had a name like that. You got an awful lot of holes in you. How do you sleep with all those rings attached to your head?"

Put them all together and throw in NINE-MILLION-DOLLARS missing from a bank heist and you have the potential for a fun tongue-in-cheek mystery. It would also help if Ms. Plum made an adult decision in her love life. Like I said earlier, I have no "Stephanie Plum" history to compare this one to; I can only say standing on its own it's mildly amusing.