This is the first in the Stephanie Plum series about an ex-lingerie saleswoman turned bounty hunter. To be honest the premise did not give me have high hopes for this book.  Many mystery novels that I read tend to feel very similar and the “smart mouth, strong willed armature bounty hunter” did not hold a lot of promise for me. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by this book.

For me the first and most important part of a mystery the quality of the mystery itself.  Is it a good chase with enough clues sprinkled in so you can figure out what is “really” happening but not so many clues that it is simple to guess the ending?  It really is a hard balancing act and in all honesty “One for the Money” does only an ok job at it.  The main reason for that is this book falls into one of the big mystery novel traps.  Evanovich just does not give you enough information to be able to figure out who the real bad guy is and what might happen.  Any conclusions you come up with before the end of the book would just be a guess.  That being said the mystery is interesting on its own and once you know all the reveals it is possible to look back over the story and see that the pieces do indeed fit together.

Rather than being a straight up mystery, which in my experience tends to be more procedural in nature, the story in “One for the Money” is more of a narrative about Stephanie’s life and adventures wrapped in a “who done it”.  What really makes this book work is what makes it unique among other mystery novels, the comedy. The story itself and the characters are legitimately funny.  There were sections of the book where I actually laughed out loud, which doesn’t happen often when I am reading most books and less so when it’s a mystery novel.

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