Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum Series #2)

by Janet Evanovich

Overview

Stephanie is after a new bail jumper, Kenny Mancuso, a boy from Trenton's burg. He's fresh out of the army, suspiciously wealthy, and he's just shot his best friend. With her bounty hunter pal Ranger stepping in occasionally to advise her, Stephanie staggers knee-deep in corpses and caskets as she traipses through back streets, dark alleys, and funeral parlors. And nobody knows funeral parlors better than Stephanie's irrepressible Grandma Mazur, a lady whose favorite pastime is grabbing a front-row seat at a neighborhood wake. So Stephanie uses Grandma as a cover to follow leads, but loses control when Grandma warms to the action, packing a cool pistol. Much to the family's chagrin, Stephanie and Granny may soon have the elusive Kenny in their sights. Low on expertise but learning fast, high on resilience, and despite the help she gets from friends and relatives, Stephanie eventually must face the danger alone when embalmed body parts begin to arrive on her doorstep and she's targeted for a nasty death by the most loathsome adversary she's ever encountered. Another case like this and she'll be a real pro.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312675066
Publisher:	St. Martin's Press
Publication date:	06/22/2010
Series:	Stephanie Plum Series , #2
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 5.66(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

Janet Evanovich is the author of the Stephanie Plum books, including One for the Money and Sizzling Sixteen, and the Diesel & Tucker series, including Wicked Appetite. Janet studied painting at Douglass College, but that art form never quite fit, and she soon moved on to writing stories. She didn't have instant success: she collected a big box of rejection letters. As she puts it, "When the box was full I burned the whole damn thing, crammed myself into pantyhose and went to work for a temp agency." But after a few months of secretarial work, she managed to sell her first novel for $2,000. She immediately quit her job and started working full-time as a writer. After 12 romance novels, she switched to mystery, and created Stephanie Plum. The rest is history. Janet's favorite exercise is shopping, and her drug of choice is Cheeze Doodles.

Hometown:

Hanover, New Hampshire

Date of Birth:

April 22, 1943

Place of Birth:

South River, New Jersey

Education:

B.A., Douglass College, 1965

Website:

http://www.evanovich.com

Read an Excerpt

...Kitty and Eugene lived in a narrow row house at the corner of Baker and Rose, across from the old Milped Button Factory. The front door sat flush to the sidewalk without benefit of yard or porch. The exterior was maroon asphalt shingle with weathered white trim. Curtains were drawn in the front room. Upstairs windows were dark.

I had pepper spray easily accessible in my jacket pocket, and my cuffs and stun gun stuck into my Levis. I knocked on the door and heard scrambling going on inside. I knocked again, and a man's voice shouted something incoherent. Again, more shuffling sounds, and then the door opened.

A young woman peered out at me from behind a security chain. "Yes?"

"Are you Kitty Petras?"

"What do you want?"

"I'm looking for your husband, Eugene. Is he at home?"

"No."

"I heard a man's voice in there. I thought it sounded like Eugene."

Kitty Petras was rail thin with a pinched face and large brown eyes. She wore no makeup. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She wasn't pretty, but she wasn't unattractive either. Mostly, she was nothing. She had forgettable features that abused women get after years of trying to make themselves invisible.

She gave me a wary look. "You know Eugene?"

"I work for his bonding agent. Eugene missed his court date yesterday, and we'd like him to reschedule." Not so much a lie as a half-truth. First we'd reschedule him, and then we'd lock him up in a dingy, smelly cell until his new date came around.

"I don't know..."

Eugene reeled into my line of sight through the crack in the door. "What's going on?"

Kitty stepped away. "This woman would like you to reschedule your court date."

Eugene shoved his face up close. All nose and chin and squinty red eyes and 100-proof breath. "What?"

I repeated the baloney about rescheduling and moved to the side so he would be forced to open the door if he wanted to see me.

The chain slid free and clanked against the jamb. "You're shitting me, right?" Eugene said.

I positioned myself halfway into the door, adjusted my pocketbook on my shoulder, and lied my little heart out. "This will only take a few minutes. We need you to stop in at the courthouse and register for a new date."

"Yeah, well, you know what I have to say to that?" He turned his back to me, dropped his pants and bent over. "Kiss my hairy white ass."

He was facing in the wrong direction to give him a snootful of pepper spray, so I reached into my Levi's and pulled out the stun gun. I'd never used it, but it didn't seem complicated. I leaned foward, firmly pressed the gadget against Eugene's butt, and hit the go button. Eugene gave a short squeak and crumpled to the floor like a sack of flour.

"My God," Kitty cried, "what have you done?"

I looked down at Eugene, who was lying motionless, eyes glazed, drawers at his knees. He was breathing a little shallowly, but I thought this was to be expected from a man who'd just taked enough juice to light up a small room. His color was pasty white, so nothing had changed there. "Stun gun," I said. "According to the brochure it leaves no lasting damage."

"Too bad. I was hoping you'd killed him."

"Maybe you should fix his pants," I said to Kitty. There was already too much ugliness in this world without having to look at Eugene's Mr. Droopy.

Copyright © 1995 by Evanovich, Inc.

Table of Contents

Editorial Reviews

A bail-skippin' jerk who plugged his best friend, along with a wad of low-grade coffins that've mysteriously wandered off (with help, of course), is Stephanie's primary concern in Two for the Dough, Janet Evanovich's second saucy Plum caper.

bn.com editor

Return of sassy New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum in Evanovich's followup to One for the Money. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

After making the finals for the Edgar, Agatha, and Shamus awards, Evanovich's debut, One for the Money (LJ 7/94), won the Dilys award from the Independent Mystery Booksellers of America as the book "most fun to sell." In this sequel, New Jersey bounty hunter Stephanie Plum encounters an illegal weapons operation.

Library Journal

Stephanie Plum is a Jersey girl with Bette Midler's mouth and Cher's fashion sense.... With her pepper spray, stun gun, up-to-here hair, and out-to-there attitude…who could resist this doll?

From the Publisher

Stephanie's mouth is as smart as her wits…One for the Money was great fun; so's Two for the Dough.

The Orlando Sentinel (FL)

If an epidemic of sore ribs sweeps across the country, the Centers for Disease Control will be able to trace it back to Janet Evanovich and Two for the Dough…. Get the book; read; enjoy. And watch out for the ribs.

The Washington Times

While Evanovich's wry humor and quirky characters are reminiscent of Elmore Leonard, she puts a feminine spin on this inventive and fast-paced thriller, which places it in a class by itself.

The San Diego Union Tribune

[In] Two for the Dough…a truly gritty, ethnic, very complex Trenton, New Jersey, comes across beautifully.

Boston Sunday Globe

Who could resist the USA original in Evanovich's sassy…Stephanie Plum? The less-than-perfect lady stirs up action and plenty of amusement with her wit and colorful circle of family and friends. Two for the Dough [is] a delight from the laugh-out-loud heavy-armor beauty parlor scene to the family dinner table and back onto the mean streets.

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