I'm pretty well bored of the static world of Stephanie Plum by now, but I got handed this book to read on a day where I needed distraction, so...okay. It's another "Between the Numbers" novel (see previous review here) where Diesel the "Unmentionable" (i.e. supernatural) bounty hunter shows up, only this time it's a longer book (and not marketed for Halloween for some strange reason). Same old, same old, really. I wouldn't go out and get this in hardback.
This time Stephanie's tracking down a little nerd genius type, Martin Munch. Diesel is tracking Munch's new business partner, Wulf, an Unmentionable who's also Diesel's cousin, and tends to kill by breaking/charbroiling a person's neck. There's also a lot of monkeys. Yes, monkeys. One character rescues them, another experiments on them, and that's not even including Carl, the neighbor's monkey that Stephanie gets dumped on her doorstep at the beginning of the book. Carl is suspiciously human in his behavior- he uses the toilet, he seems to comprehend speech, he plays with Super Mario. Is this ever explained? Um, no. In between monkey business and Lula getting pissed off at Tank for adopting cats, we also meet the people of the Pine Barrens- a lot of Unmentionables seem to live over there, like Sasquatch and the Easter Bunny. Ranger does his usual cleanup, Joe's distracted by his idiot brother moving in.
And...that's it. I got nothing else to say here. It's okay, nothing to write home about, you won't remember this in 12 hours. I still wonder why the author does these books if they don't really go with the continuity so much. Diesel is another alpha male stand-in that Steph really can't sleep with, there's mild comedy but nothing spectacular, you find out a little more about the Unmentionables but again, nothing too much.
Meh. I'll give it two and a half stars.
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