SEVEN UP

Tanya Eby’s performance is effervescent as she plays Stephanie Plum, wise-cracking New Jersey bounty hunter who is back in Evanovich’s seventh whodunit. (This listener was cautioned by aficionados to take in this author’s first six, but that was not really necessary.) Plum, who works for her cousin Vinnie, a bail bondsman, and her cast of characters, who include her hip 83-year-old grandmother, vice cop and boyfriend Joe Morelli, and Ranger, a truly magnificent dude, track a missing senior citizen. Eby, as Plum, often sounds like Popeye’s Olive Oyl; she is portrayed as brassy, bold, and sassy and has the New Jersey idiom down almost perfectly. Her SEVEN UP portrayal sparkles and never fizzles out. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine [Published: OCT/ NOV 01]