Dirty Thirty by Janet Evanovich: review

4/5 stars on Goodreads

Dirty Thirty by Janet Evanovich

It’s book number 30 in the series, thirty years of Stephanie Plum. I’ve been reading the series almost as long, which doesn’t make me feel as old as it should. Stephanie definitely hasn’t aged. Technology has followed the date though (hence the wholly unironical covid masks here), and isn’t stuck in the mid-nineties where the books should take place.

Everything else has stayed pretty much the same for thirty years. The formula of Stephanie and Lula going after FTAs with more determination than skill works, so why change. You’d think that in all this time they’d learned something, but not so much, although Stephanie’s started to taze the difficult skips first and ask questions later. It turns out to be an improvement, and the duo manages to bring in quite a number of FTAs without much damage to their person. Stephanie’s car obviously suffers. How else could she get a loaner from Ranger.

The zaniness that took over the books somewhere during the mid-point, has been toned down recently, which is a return to earlier books. Grandma barely does anything silly, and the comedic reliefs are a helpful graverobber and Morelli’s dog Bob, neither of which is over the top silly. Even Lula’s Grendel stalker turns out to have an almost normal explanation. The real bad guy is, like in all books, fairly deadly and causes great damage, but, like always, a bit of an afterthought within everything else that is going on.

The two men in Stephanie’s life are the same too: Morelli and Ranger. This time, Morelli is out of town, giving Ranger time to make his move. And he manages to surprise both Stephanie and the reader. And when Morelli returns, he manages to pull the same move. It only took the men thirty years to get there. It seems though, that Stephanie still needs another decade or two to choose between them.

But she’ll need to change something, because after all these years, several break-ins and a couple of fires, Stephanie has to give up her apartment. Will she choose to move in with one of her suitors? Or will this be one of those story-lines that disappear by the next book, like so often? I guess I’ll have to read on to find out.

Despite all the sameness, this book managed to get me out of a reading slump, which I’ll count in its great favour, hence the four-star rating. Maybe I’ll even go back and read the previous book in the series, which I couldn’t finish. Not because it’s necessary to read it to understand the subsequent books, but to keep my thirty-year run intact.