Occasionally, someone who hears I write mystery fiction will ask what I think of such-and-such a book. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll type it up, give it a little spit shine and throw it on the blog.

Of course, there’s always a catch, so here’s this one: I won’t write about books I really didn’t like. Why? Because I am spineless little weasel. Even for a newbie like myself who has only been attending writer’s meetings and whatnot for a couple of years, it’s surprising how small the publishing community is. I have a friend from Kentucky who once described a fellow Kentucky acquaintance by saying, “Her family tree doesn’t branch.” It’s kinda like that.

But I’ll crow like crazy over a book I did like, so that’s what we’ll do here. And we’ll start with ELEVEN ON TOP (this blog thing won’t let me do italics, so we’ll all have to live with caps) by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin’s Press, $26.95, 310 pages).

As the name would suggest this is the eleventh in her Stephanie Plum series. In the past, Stephanie has been working for her cousin Vinnie as a bounty hunter, eating doughnuts, having romantic capers with a local cop – Morelli – and a fellow bounty hunter/dark horse – Ranger – , taking her grandma to funerals as entertainment and destroying her endless string of new cars. And this time around, she didn’t stray all that far from the farm – just far enough to breathe some new life into a middle-aged series.

This is not a book, or an author for that matter, for hard-core Dashiell Hammett fans. It’s more Three Stooges funny, than hardcore mystery. It’s the sort of book you could read while sitting at the laundry mat or in the dentist’s waiting room just before your root canal. It’s book candy. And it’s really, really good at it.

Plum fans will be thrilled to hear that Stephanie quits her job at Vinnie’s and, after a series of unfortunate minimum-wage gigs, gets a job at Rangeman, the security company run by her dark horse love interest, Ranger. Much sexual tension ensues, complicated by her on-going relationship with Morelli who she’s now living with on a temporary basis.

Stephanie’s sister and her kids, Grandma Mazur and the rest of the Plums, along with Lula and Bob the dog are all still around and as light and amusing as ever. They mystery part of the book wasn’t as...well...strong as it could have been. But the characters are fun, the slapstick is spot on and the men are appropriately dashing. It’s the summer blockbuster movie of the book world, and well worth the price of admission.