Good evening lovelies. Hope you are having a good week and Happy Hump Day to you all. We had a fab weekend, and very much enjoyed our shopping day in Newcastle. Having woken to frost (in April!), we became very toasty when we reached a much sunnier Newcastle. We had a good time shopping, and of course visited a bookshop, and were astounded by Fenwick's.

Read my review of Eyes on the Road by Karen C. Whalen

Fenwick's is a department store here in the UK. The branch in Newcastle is enormous!!!! Wide aisles and tonnes to look at. We only managed 2 floors and enjoyed a delicious meal in the food hall. And can I say a massive thank you to the lovely waitress there, who was so kind when I had a nosebleed of biblical proportions!

On to today's review, and this is pure nostalgia for me from my bookselling days. It brings back happy memories of the team I worked with, one of which can only be described as the shop mum. Every shop had one, she mothered us all and we would often be bossed around gently and made to go for a cup of tea if we were feeling stressed at all.

If I was to describe a shop book, this would be it. Each member of staff had read it, and all of us loved it and would relish the chance to recommend it to anyone. Our shop mum was the best at doing so, and when selling a copy would ask 'Are you Team Morelli or Team Ranger?' So what was she talking about? Let's find out shall we!

The Plot

Stephanie Plum is down on her luck. She's lost her job, her car's on the brink of repossession and her apartment is fast becoming furniture free.

Enter cousin Vinnie, a low-life who runs a bail-bond company. If Stephanie can bring in vice cop turned outlaw Joe Morelli, she stands to pick up $10,000. But tracking down a cop wanted for murder isn't easy.

And when Benito Ramirez, a prize fighter with more menace than mentality, wants to be her friend Stephanie soon knows what it's like to be pursued. Unfortunately the best person to protect her just happens to be on the run.

My Thoughts

This is the first book in the Stephanie Plum series whioch I would strongly recommend reading in order. The titles helpfully have the number in their title that they are, so One for the Money is the first book, Two for the Dough is the second and so on. Written in 1994 this won a CWA laughter award and it is not hard to see why.

Stephanie Plum is all kinds of hopeless who becomes a bond agent when she finds herself very broke. Her first bond breaker is Joe Morelli, who Stephanie has history with of the sexy kind. What then ensues is a rip-roaring, laugh out load series of adventures.

We meet a terrific host of brilliant characters - Ranger, Joe, Cousin Vinnie, Grandma Mazur and Lola, all of whom feature in later books. Her family are brilliant and we learn all about life in 'the Burg' where dinner is on the table at 6pm promptly and mother are always on the look out for nice men for their daughters. At one such meal, Grandma Mazur shoots a cooked chicken, you get the picture.

This has been a real nostalgic blast from the past and a perfect 5 Star for me. An engaging crime, a scary villain, brilliant characters and laugh out loud writing.