By Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes.
"Who is Muffin?" Vera asked.
"Max's computer," Jamie replied. "She's really awesome, but she's going through menopause right now so Max had to disable her for a little while. She's back now and feeling much better."
Vera sighed. "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer."
Yeah, THAT's the kind of book we're dealing with here.
This is the first sequel to Full House, in which Max Holt has become a supergenius, superrich, supernice, superfuckingperfect stud-o-rama.
Comparing Adult Max and Teenage Max, who I loved...well, it's not the same guy. Adult Max is superfuckingperfect in every way. He's the Mary Poppins of rich geniuses. Other than a tendency towards speedy driving, what does he have that's nonperfect about him? Nothing. It's too much. (Kinda like Rourke in the In Death series. Nice fellow, but too perfect as well.) His character traits pretty much boil down to nice, rich, genius, daredevil-y. It's too unreal.
Anyhoo, it's maybe 20 years later and Max has headed down to Beaumont, South Carolina, where his brother-in-law Frankie is running for mayor and getting threatening letters. He's also there to check out Jamie Swift, Deedee's best friend who runs the town newspaper. Seems that when the paper was in trouble, Deedee talked Max into becoming a silent partner in the paper, and Jamie has no idea that "M. Holt" is (a) her best friend's brother, or (b) THE MAXIMILIAN HOLT. Don't ask me why a chick who investigates stuff doesn't say, know her best friend's maiden name here. It gets even weirder when they meet and Max doesn't tell Jamie he's her partner...and ends up inadventently scaring the shit out of her.
Anyway, it turns out that someone's put a hit out on Max, and/or Frankie (I'm kind of confused on this point), something to do with Frankie pledging to clean up the corruption in the town, and Max and Jamie end up investigating it.
There's potential with the characters. I do like Vera and Jamie, and other folks aren't bad. But there's also a high level of ludricrousness going on in this story.
For example, Muffin the talking car. ("Like KITT?", someone said to me when I told her the plot of this story. Yes.) Muffin has the voice of Marilyn Monroe and can hack anything and can both think like a computer and a human. To the point of deciding she's going through menopause because she chats with someone having hot flashes. WTF?! I already have issues with believing a car's that sophisticated as is, but that's just...stupid.
Oh, and then there's Beenie, Deedee's flamingly gay personal assistant. At one point he gets hit on the head, "sort of" loses his memory, and develops some kind of heterosexual macho man personality. And yet nobody is all, "WTF? Maybe we should like, take him to a doctor or something." This would only make sense if Beenie had a hidden case of DID. It's brought up for a stupid laugh or two and then dropped.
Anyway...this was just pretty ridiculous all around. If I had started reading the series at book one or two (instead of starting at 5 and 4 the way I actually did), I don't think I'd have read the rest. Sheesh.
Two stars.
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