Hardcore Twenty-Four

As enjoyable as all the others.

3.5★s Hardcore Twenty-four is the twenty-fourth full-length novel in the popular Stephanie Plum series by American author, Janet Evanovich. A spate of headless bodies is keeping Trenton's police busy, in particular Joe Morelli, current boyfriend of bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. Many apparently lose their heads in funeral parlours, although one victim near a dumpster kept his head but lost his brain. And when the heads begin turning up minus brains, Stephanie's colleague Lula is convinced that zombies are to blame. After all, didn't their last skip, grave robber Simon Diggery say he was sure he'd opened a zombie portal in the Morley Street cemetery?

As Stephanie tracks down her FTAs, things keep happening to make the zombie explanation look more and more likely, except that zombies don't exist, do they? And then Diesel turns up, always a sign that things are getting weird. Stephanie finds herself looking after Ethel, Diggery's boa constrictor, when he goes to jail. On top of that, Grandma Mazur has a new man, this one found on the internet and living in Florida.

Not content with having Stephanie eternally vacillate between Morelli and Ranger, Evanovich decides to throw into the mix the mysterious Diesel (from the In-Betweens), having him suddenly appear in her apartment and in her bed. Lula, as always, entertains with her money-making schemes, and Stephanie manages to destroy or otherwise render unusable, three vehicles (not all her fault), one via an exploding groundhog. Always entertaining.