Page Turners - by Judi Brownfield
Courier News & Daily Herald
                           1^st Friday of every month

July 19^th, 2002

    Steaming from a Hannibal Lecter day at the office? Experiencing rush hour overload with a wannabe Dale Eamhardt hot on your bumper? Enduring hours with your favorite crumb crushers nipping at your ankle bones?

    Climb out of the car, brush away the crumbs and forget those mind-numbing client dilemmas. It is time to slow down, kick back and take in a laugh.

    By all scientific rhetoric, time out for a smile is the healthy thing to do. And few are better at it than Janet Evanovich. Do not give me a “Janet who?” Evanovich is a consistent New York Times best-selling author, who in recent years has enjoyed a top 10 perch and has a runaway record with her avid fans.

    If you haven’t picked up her One For the Money, the first in a screwball adventure mystery series, you need to. It’s loaded with fast and furious pace, off-the-wall characters and gritty dialogue that either makes you gasp or roll off the couch laughing.

    Evanovich is an author determined to lighten your night “I’m not happy if I don’t have the entire world laughing,” she said during an interview. ‘If there are four people out there not laughing, I’m not done yet”

    To that end, Evanovich has crafted an out-of-work, smart-mouthed Jersey girl, Stephanie Plum, who is funny, tough and politically incorrect Enticed to re-enter the work force by her empty kitchen shelves, Stephanie dives into the shady world with Cousin Vinnie, a bail bondsman.

    Assigned to track down the legally challenged who’ve skipped court dates, a disguised Stephanie finds herself muttering diabolical references regarding Vinnie’s training program.

    Armed with a stun gun and a cracked hair spray bottle, Stephanie is aided by an assortment of odd characters — Ranger, a tall, dark former Special Forces Cuban-American of few words; and Cousin Vinnie’s numero uno on-call bounty hunter, bad boy Morelli, who operates as a city detective and Stephanie’s personal sexual nemesis.

    And then there’s 73-year-old Grandma Mazur. Evanovich observes, ‘She doesn’t want to miss a thing. She’s old, she knows she’s old, but she’s going to wear Spandex biker shorts if she wants to. She’s a dysfunctional, lovable character.

“One of the fun and valuable things a writer can do is to showcase a character who in real life would be unpleasant and present it to your reader in such a way that they can see the positive in that character,” stated Evanovich. ‘You can take someone like Grandma Mazur, who would be an annoying thorn-in-your side old woman, and see she has this great joy for life. You wouldn’t want to live with her, but you can understand her. She has all this joy inside her for living.”

    Grandma Mazur can be found interfering in Stephanie’s cases and fluttering lashes as she evaluates the senior testosterone found in her avid trips to the local funeral parlors.

    Seemingly inspired by a cross between Indiana Jones and Donald Duck, tough characters dot through all eight books in this mystery adventure series. From the first title to her newest, Hard Eight, Evanovich delivers a runaway story with plenty of punch and a no-holds-barred, to-the-point writing style.

    Film rights for One For the Money have been contracted by Tri-Star Pictures, and Evanovich envisions Sandra Bullock as Stephanie Plum but sincerely hopes one particular star is cast somewhere in the plot ‘Sometime in my life, I’d like to hit the dance floor with John Travolta,” she said.

    For other forecasts by Janet Evanovich, check our Web site, www.booksatsunset.com, and hers, www.evanovich.com.

Locals take their pick from dark side
    For summer smiles, avid Elgin reader Mary Van Slyck finds anything by mystery author Dick Francis a solid choice.

    Denver best-selling author Ernie Garrison claims Elmore Leonard is fail-safe. “He writes a detective mystery with a funny vein. Unexpected twists and turns become comical.”

    Don’t wait to pick up Rum Punch and Unknown Man #89.  Elaine Van Wambeke firmly believes Denise Swanson is a rising star in this venue. With books titled Murder of a Small Town Honey, Murder of a Sweet Old Lady and Murder of a Sleeping Beauty, one could conclude there’s a whole lot of murder going on in the sleepy little community of Scumble River, Ill. Swanson has patterned her fictional town on the real-life community of her childhood, Coal City.

    She claims there’s no one that diabolical there. Hmmm. With an inadvertent corpse or two scattered about, there could be a minor problem for the locals.

    Sci-fi/fantasy fan Herb Gross favors the ever-wicked Douglas Adams. “This writer has an unusual talent in dropping slightly off-kilter characters into slightly off-kilter plots. Quick, fast and fun.”  Give a look to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy or Restaurant at the End of the Universe.