Janet Evanovich’s Seven Up

Last weekend, I finished reading Janet Evanovich’s Seven Up, the seventh book in her Stephanie Plum series.  In this seventh book, Stephanie is seeking to apprehend Eddie DeChooch, a senior citizen who has not appeared at his originally scheduled court date.  For starters, it was very difficult for me to get really into this seventh book.  I’m not sure exactly what it was, to be perfectly honest, that kept me from doing so.  Maybe it’s that I’ve grown a little tired of Stephanie Plum, or maybe it’s because this senior citizen really drove home the point, more so than in the previous six Stephanie Plum novels, of how much of a flat foot Stephanie Plum truly is.

It was really quite depressing/amazing the number of times that Eddie was able to foil Stephanie’s many attempts to apprehend him.  Whether by simple luck, capturing Grandma Mazur, or shooting at Stephanie, Eddie truly demonstrated how incompetent Stephanie truly is at her job of ‘professional’ bounty hunter.  Even her own mother suggested she try out a different occupation, one that was safer with the prospects of a somewhat steady paycheck.  I’m thinking the incompetence really turned me off in this novel more so than the previous ones, and that caused me to not enjoy this iteration as much.

On the flip side, there was enough humor with the marriage story-line to keep things moving somewhat, and those parts of the book where Stephanie was a complete flat foot.  It appeared that neither her, nor Joe, really wanted to get married, and Stephanie is conflicted with whether she wants a relationship/one night stand with Ranger.

Overall, I was rather disappointed with the story and just got quite annoyed with the bumbling nature of Stephanie in Seven Up.  If I do read the next book, Hard Eight, it will be to easily confirm if I’m really that disgusted with Stephanie Plum as a character.  If you’ve read Seven Up, or Hard Eight, I’d love to hear your thoughts and see if I’m a bit off base with my assessment of Stephanie Plum as a character.