"Tricky-Twenty Two" is the twenty second number entry (plus four "Between the Numbers" stories) in the long running Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich.
First things first - I like these books, no apologies needed or forthcoming for that. For the most part, they are entertaining and fun and they give my brain a chance to rest and recover after crunching through Iain M. Banks or a "Dune" novel. Evanovich is a good storyteller who has created a likable cast of characters for these books, and for the most part, they deliver what they promise - a nice way to spend a few hours with characters who are by j=now old friends.
As to "Twenty-Two" itself, I think it is a jump up in quality from the last three or four - 19 and 20 were not enjoyable, 21 was a step in the right direction, but "Twenty-Two" brings the series back to where it was in the early days in terms of being enjoyable. I don't know if that is because she has more time to devote to the Stephanie Plum books with the outsourcing and co-authoring of her other projects, but whatever it is, I hope it doesn't change.
Are there gripes with the book - of course there are, no book is perfect. Some of those are personal biases (such as the fact that the characters don't age - that reduces their ability to grow through the series, in my view), and others deal with the story themselves (a few of the supporting characters here were a little over the top, even for the bug-nuts crazy world of Trenton that Stephanie Plum inhabits), but none are so severe that they get in the way of the story.
Spoiler-free this time.
Final rating: 6/10
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