Tricky Twenty-Two

Tricky Twenty-Two is the twenty-second entry in Janet Evanovich’s long-running Stephanie Plum series, and at this point the books are essentially comfort food: Trenton, the cousin Vinnie’s bail bonds storefront, the Morelli/Ranger holding pattern, Lula doing something visibility-grabbing on page one. Stephanie is hunting Kenneth Ball, a fraternity president skipping court on assault charges, while the campus around him starts to look increasingly contaminated, in the strict environmental-health sense, which becomes the actual plot.

The strength of late-series Plum is voice. The first-person Stephanie narration is still tight, the timing of the running gags (Lula’s outfits, Grandma Mazur’s funeral attendance, Stephanie’s blown-up cars) is still well calibrated, and there are a couple of moments here, particularly with a chimpanzee subplot that has no business working, that earn a real laugh. What the book lacks is forward emotional momentum. Plum readers have been waiting for the Morelli / Ranger arc to actually move for ten books now. It does not move here. If that frustrates you, this is not the entry that will fix it.

Best for completist Stephanie Plum readers and anyone who wants a low-effort, high-comfort romp through Trenton. Books like Tricky Twenty-Two are not trying to surprise you; they are trying to land the same punchlines a little sharper than last year. By that measure, this one mostly succeeds. Three stars, leaning generous.