Evanovich has certainly come a long way since One for the Money; her latest Stephanie Plum mystery merits a one-day national laydown on June 18. Here, Plum looks for a missing child while trying to keep her love life from getting out of hand. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Stephanie Plum lives not far from her parents in a Trenton, New Jersey, neighborhood called the Burg. Things haven't changed much there since the '50s, despite cell phones and computers and the fact that Stephanie works as a bounty hunter. Stephanie still eats her mom's macaroni and cheese for comfort, and Mom's is where her sister Valerie went when her marriage blew up. It's a little darker for our heroine now. She's kind of broken up with Morelli, the gorgeous cop; she's still wary of Ranger, her guide in bounty hunting, who is composed of equal parts magic and darkness; and an eerie, scary bad guy named Abruzzi is putting snakes in her apartment and spiders in her car, when his minions aren't blowing it up. Steph is trying to find the missing daughter and granddaughter of her mom's next-door neighbor, and Abruzzi doesn't like that. The things Evanovich does so well--family angst, sweet eroticism, stealth shopping, that stunning mix of terror and hilarity--are done better than ever here. This one not only allows Steph some inchoate but graceful complexity but also gives splendid cameos to both her mom and Valerie (the moving automobile as weapon has rarely been employed more outrageously--twice). And Grandma Mazur in the doughnut shop parking lot--well, you won't believe it. --GraceAnne A. DeCandido

The menace is more personal for Trenton's favorite bounty hunter and the energy more manic in this latest outing than in last year's Seven Up. As a favor to her mother's next-door neighbor, Mabel Markowitz, Stephanie agrees to check up on the lady's granddaughter, Evelyn Soder, who has suddenly taken off with her little girl, Annie, leaving behind a child custody bond against Mabel's house. The son-in-law is a bad guy who lost his bar to Eddie Abruzzi, a very nasty character who owns Evelyn's building. Soon someone in a bunny suit is trailing Stephanie, her car is blown up, her apartment infiltrated and a dead body appears on her couch. She calls in her associate, Ranger, the gorgeous and mysterious Cuban bond agent, while her sometime boyfriend, Morelli the cop, also gets on the case - a real doozy for which she's not getting paid. On the home front, ever-raunchy Grandma Mazur is eager to assist. Sister Valerie and kids have moved back in as well, so there's nowhere but the couch for Stephanie and one bathroom for all. Valerie is inexplicably attracted to Evelyn's goofy lawyer, who's been tagging along with Stephanie and the ever-outrageous file clerk and ex-hooker Lula, further complicating this twisted case. Life in the Burg takes on a sinister turn with serious results. evanovich does it again, delivering an even more suspenseful and more outrageous turn with the unstoppable Stephanie, heroine of all those who have to live on peanut butter until the next check comes through. Waiting for nine will be tough. Agent, Robert Gottlieb. (One-day laydown June 18) Forecast: Seven Up landed on most bestseller lists at #1 first week out, not only because of the author's popularity but also because of clever positioning of on-sale date by St. Martin's. Whether or not the house can repeat the trick, expect huge sales for this title. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Stephanie Plum, Trenton's dizziest, most dysfunctional skip tracer, has papers on a couple of wacko Failure to Appears, but fat Marty Paulson and skinny Andy Bender are humdrum bizarros compared to the sociopath about to enter her life: loan shark/murderer Eddie Abruzzo, whom Steph perceives as a "total fruitcake" the instant her fear and trembling subside. "I know how to make women uncomfortable," he tells her, and does she ever believe him. Next to torturing and killing, military history is Eddie's driving passion, and now his authentic Napoleon medal has gone missing. When he becomes convinced on flimsy evidence that if Steph doesn't have the medal, she knows who does, she finds herself in a war of nerves with an implacable enemy who's part Clausewitz and part clown, from sorties by Abruzzi soldiers in the masks of ex-presidents to an attack by a homicidal rabbit--a hit man winsomely decked out in a bunny suit, from whom Steph escapes when Mama Plum, rising to the moment, counterattacks furiously in the family Buick. Meanwhile, Steph's love life remains unresolved as slinky colleague Ranger Manoso and hunky detective Joe Morelli continue their kinky game of ping-pong-Plum with Lady Bounty Hunter getting paddled. Watch out for plot holes big enough to drive that Buick through. True, charm has always been more important than plot to this series, but in her eighth trip to the plate (Seven-Up, 2001, etc.), Steph's ditzy allure may be withering before the curse of familiarity. For loyalists only. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.