By Rachael Bentley
One For The Money was Janet Evanovich’s first novel ever published about the frisky and frizzy haired bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. One For The Money is the first of the 18 book series, which includes Two For The Dough and Three To Get Deadly.
It was first published in 1994 and quickly became a long-time best seller, appearing for 75 consecutive weeks on the USA today list of 150 top selling books, peaking at number 59.
Stephanie Plum, our leading lady, is an unemployed lingerie buyer who applies for a job as an amateur bounty hunter for her cousin Vinny. His secretary sets Stephanie up with a tough first target, Joe Morelli, who is a vice cop charged with murder and who is also a one time sexual acquaintance of Stephanies.
The $10,000 dollars that she can claim if she brings him in is more than tempting for Plum but she soon becomes entangled in the crime side of life and makes an enemy out of the town’s heavy weight boxing champ, who is accused of the sexual assault and murder of several women, and those affiliated with him.
Even though the plot and the characters are very entertaining in this book, I was disappointed in a lot of what Evanovich had to offer for her writing style. The fact that the book is written in first person did not really appeal to me as a reader, and it made me feel like I was listening to someone’s inner monologue constantly. The book could have been much more entertaining if we as readers could see what others saw and thought of Stephanie.
Evanovich created a very relatable and diverting leading lady, but almost every chapter starts with Stephanie talking about how she starts her day, including going for a run, feeding her hamster, doing her hair and putting on makeup. At the beginning of the novel I was okay with this methodical behavior because that may have been her personality, but as the plot thickened I didn’t really feel like Stephanie grew as a character at all and she became too predictable. She did overcome a few obstacles, like her fear of guns and her ability to track down information, but overall I was hoping for more of a ‘butterfly coming out of its cocoon’ effect.
That being said, there are 17 more books based on Stephanie Plum, so perhaps the series is better as a whole rather than just based on the first book. Considering that the book takes all of 3 hours to read, it is more of a guilty pleasure to read whilst you are sitting on a beach, rather than a novel you would bring to a book club to discuss.
In regards to the other characters in the novel I was fairly happy with the amount of description and humorous details that went into their creation like Ranger, Vinny, and Lula the Prostitute. Benito Ramirez, the insane heavy weight boxer, put chills down my spine when reading about his harassing phone calls to Stephanie. I had trouble falling asleep after reading about him because he just got under my skin in the worst possible way.
Although I was marginally disappointed with the total effect of the book, I’m likely to continue reading the rest of the series because truth be told, reading One for the Money was a lot more fun than reading, say, the memoirs of Abraham Lincoln or something else required for my classes. The world of Stephanie Plum and her crazy family can be a nice escape for those of us who are feeling blasé about our own daily lives.
