Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
Foul Play is Janet Evanovich's 1989 contemporary romance under her Steffie Hall pen name. Amy Klasse is a small-town New Jersey newspaper editor who has been editing the family paper since her father's death. Jacob Elliott is the local landscaper who keeps interrupting her workdays. The plot is standard 1980s comic romance: chemistry, complication, third-act misunderstanding, resolution.
The pre-Plum Evanovich voice is recognizable on every page. The Trenton-suburb texture, the small-paper editorial-meeting comedy, the family-business inheritance plot all foreshadow the Plum-era register without the bounty-hunter mechanics. The romance arc lands cleanly. The supporting cast is thinner than the Plum books would later be.
Recommended for Evanovich completists, for fans of late-1980s comic romance, and for readers looking for books like Foul Play in the small-paper-editor-meets-local-guy subgenre. Three solid stars and a useful look at Evanovich learning her voice.
Related reads
If you liked Foul Play
Hero at Large
by Steffie Hall
Hero at Large by Janet Evanovich writing as Steffie Hall 1987 review. A pre-Stephanie Plum romance where a Chicago insurance investigator gets stuck with a witness who refuses to behave.
Fourth Wing
by Rebecca Yarros
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros 2023 review. Violet Sorrengail, a fragile scribe, is forced into the brutal dragon-riding war college. The first book of the Empyrean series and the romantasy novel that defined the 2023-2024 BookTok moment.
In Too Deep
by Cherry Adair
Cherry Adair doing T-FLAC romantic suspense. Globe-hopping, ridiculous, and exactly as fun as it knows it is.
The Last Time I Saw Paris
by Elizabeth Adler
The Last Time I Saw Paris by Elizabeth Adler 2001 review. A widow inherits a Paris apartment, a chateau, and a daughter she did not know about in this gentle expat romance.
The Fashionable P.I.
by Rida Allen
The Fashionable P.I. by Rida Allen 2002 review. A Boston PI series debut in which Mac Sullivan investigates a Newbury Street boutique murder that everyone wants to call accidental.
It Ends with Us
by Colleen Hoover
Colleen Hoover at her most daring. A romance that refuses to be comfortable, and is more powerful for it.
More by this author