She’s back!  Stephanie Plum!

Here’s Amazon’s teaser: Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she’s knee deep in trouble. Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she’s flying back to New Jersey solo. Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover. Now he’s dead, in a garbage can, waiting for curbside pickup. His killer could be anyone. And a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying.  Only one other person has seen the missing photo—Stephanie Plum. Now she’s the target, and she doesn’t intend to end up in a garbage can.

The good news is that Janet Evanovich has brought us a new S. Plum novel.  This could be the bad news: it’s getting boring.  I say that not because I’ve yet read the book (it just came out this week), but because there are too many reviews echoing the words of reviewer “D. Strickland” (on the Amazon site) who write, “When I first began this series I was in love with all the main characters and found the side characters amusing enough. Stephanie was quirky and a little flaky, but she was funny, too. I couldn’t read the books fast enough.” But then, the critic complains that we’re seeing the same-ol’-same-ol’ and it’s getting boring, concluding with, “I swear – I’m really done with this series this time!”

But contrast that with these ratings (showing ranking in terms of sales through the Amazon site) as of November 23, 2011:

  • #1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Comic
  • #4 in Books > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Women Sleuths
  • #6 in Books > Romance

Somebody is buying this book!  Lots of somebodies!  One is reviewer Steve Abney, who wrote: “Janet is sooo good. … so far as good as all other books in this series and feels updated to this year………This has been my favorite series for years.”

If you are a Plum fan, you may have to read “18″ to decide for yourself.  Let me know what you come up with.