Play Book Tag discussion

This is a reread, but I don't seem to have an original review anywhere, just the 3 stars, which I agree with (book 6 is much funnier for me).

Stephanie Plum, who last her job as a lingerie buyer six months ago and has only found low paying temp jobs, turns to her cousin, the creepy Vincent Plum, for work. He doesn't need a filing clerk anymore, but one of his best bounty hunters has just had surgery, so she starts hunting for a man she has known since she was a child, a cop by the name of Joe Morelli. We are barely given any time with Ranger, a mysterious man who does bounty hunting sometimes, and of course he shows up in every book, sometimes more than others.

One of the things I didn't care for in this book, which has bothered me in other books and is one of the reasons these are rarely more than 3 stars, is that sometimes Stephanie PLum is TSTL. I realize that her bumbling is part of the humour, of course, but in this one it is just ridiculous, and probably best read only once. Plus, while there are always criminals, the horrible, creepy, evil boxer in this one is the kind that I hate to read about, even if it's in a funny book where I know the protagonist is going to make it. Nothing is funny about anything he does.

Even Grandma Mazur, one of my favourite characters, isn't quite as funny to me in this book. It's also hard as a reread because this is the one where many of the characters who are in every book are first introduced and I already know too much about them to enjoy that as much.