Four to Score -- Janet Evanovich

A new-ish guilty pleasure.

I recently finally broke down and read the first Stephanie Plum book. And then the next one. And the next. So, last night, I read the fourth one—the brilliantly titled Four to Score. (Unlike Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich is lucky—she's never going to run out of numbers with which to construct her oh-so-clever titles). All snarkiness aside (I think that I feel the need to be snarky so I can make myself feel better about enjoying these so much), these books rule. How can you really go wrong with an extremely unskilled bounty hunter with huge hair and blue eyeshadow from Jersey? She does things like squirt hairspray at people. And she likes doughnuts. But even better than Stephanie are her friends:

Stay out of this, fatso," Joyce said.

"Fatso," Lula said, eyes narrowed. "Who you calling fatso?"

"I'm calling you fatso, you big tub of lard."

Lula reached out to Joyce, Joyce made a squeak, her eyes went blank, and she crashed to the ground.

Everyone turned to Joyce.

"Must have fainted," Lula said to the crowd. "Guess she's one of those women can't stand to see men fighting."

"I saw that!" I said to Lula, keeping my voice low. "You zapped her with your stun gun!"

and family:

"Other mothers have daughters who get married and have children," my mother said. "I have a daughter who blows up cars. How did this happen? This didn't come from my side of the family."

We were at the table, eating dinner, and my father had his head bent over his plate, and his shoulders were shaking.

"What?" my mother said to him.

"I don't know. It just struck me as funny. Some men could go a lifetime and never have their kid blow up a car, but I have a daughter who's knocked off three cars and burned down a funeral home. Maybe that's some kind of record."

Everyone sat in shocked silence because that was the longest speech my father had made in fifteen years.

And, of course, there's the hot guys—Morelli, the cop, and Ranger, the bounty hunter. The books have all been pretty much the same (so far), but they make me laugh out loud. A lot. I've heard that the series goes downhill around book seven or so, but I've got a while until then.