Turbo Twenty-Three – Janet Evanovich

Release date: 15 November 2016
Rating: ★★★★★★★ – 7/10
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Turbo Twenty-Three (Stephanie Plum series #23) blurb:

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum has been on countless crime scenes, but this is definitely a first.  Her fleeing target has left behind a truck loaded with ice cream and a dead body – frozen solid and covered in chocolate and chopped pecans.

As fate would have it, Stephanie’s mentor and occasional employer, Ranger, needs her to go undercover at the ice cream factory to find out who’s killing employees and sabotaging the business.  It’s going to be hard for Stephanie to keep her hands off all that ice cream, and even harder for her to keep her hands off Ranger.  It’s also going to be hard to explain to Trenton’s hottest cop, Joe Morelli, why she is spending late nights with Ranger…

Stephanie Plum has a lot on her plate, but for a girl who claims to have ‘virtually no marketable skills’, these are the kinds of sweet assignments she does best.

So, I wrote a vague (yet strangely thorough) review of the series to date late last year (you can read it here), and then this book literally sat on my TBR pile until two days ago.  They’re a quick, light and mostly enjoyable read.

Now, at the last review I mentioned that I probably wouldn’t be happy if the synopsis didn’t change for these books.  The synopsis kind of changed – I feel there could be a conclusion on its way in the next year or so – but I was not pleasantly satisfied with the ending, and I am absolutely going to mention a spoiler in this.  You have been warned.

Firstly, there was no mention of Big Blue in this book at all.  As previously discussed, Stephanie goes through cars more often than most people go through underwear.  There is generally at least 2-3 cars per book, but when Steph (I can call her that, right?  I feel like we’re friends) has a ‘mishap’ she always goes to her Uncle Stan’s powder blue Buick.  Don’t get me wrong, she absolutely crashed a car in this – not total destruction like it usually is – but, Steph bought a nice (likely hot) car from a seemingly sweet gentleman and the car survived the book.  Colour me impressed.

Secondly, she slept with both, Morelli and Ranger, in this book.  I LOVED THIS!  It was weird because secretly I was absolutely cheering on her Tinkerbell side all book (book joke – you have to read it to get it), despite the fact that Steph and Morelli were in the ‘on’ phase of their on/off relationship.  So she was Wendy, I was Tinkerbell, then she went ‘fuck it’ and turned Tinkerbell, and then I did a happy dance, but then she ended up back with Morelli and then I was really disappointed.  So, it turns out I like Ranger better.  Plus he raised a valid argument.

SIDE NOTE: You know, in my head Ranger looks like Roman Reigns from WWE (click here if you don’t know who this is – and also no judgement for watching WWE please), and because I have never seen the awful, awful (total speculation) movie I can continue this fantasy.

In terms of the actual storyline of this book, it was good.  There was murder and plot twists and the usual suspects who turn out to have nothing to do with the crime/s.  Lula was hilarious, as was Grandma Mazur and her new squeeze Bertie.  Steph’s mum seems to be dipping into that whisky cabinet earlier and earlier, but hey, who am I to judge?  I thought there might be a bit more tie-in with the drugs that Connie took towards the end and some of the factory staff, but it all sort of wrapped up really quickly.

Anyway, overall a good read, and again, I’ve got my pom poms ready for Tinkerbell and Ranger for whenever number twenty-four comes out.