Janet Evanovich’s first Stephanie Plum’s novel from 1994 is probably an odd choice for ‘romantic novel’ because it most definitely sits on the crime shelf in book shops. It won a Crime Writers’ Association award for best debut, and the sequel, Two For the Show, won a CWA award for best comic novel. Janet Evanovich is a triple threat: she can write romance, comedy, and also intricately plot a crime caper.

But Evanovich’s first career was writing romantic fiction, and she can’t seem to resist suffu...