Just Finished Reading Hot Six by Janet Evanovich

Picking back up Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mystery book series after several years, it took me a little bit of time to recall all the main recurring characters and circumstances...but after reading High Five last week, I felt that the next book would be a quick work of reading...it was.  In Hot Six, almost comically incompetent bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, who works for a Trenton, New Jersey bail bonds company to bring in people missing their appointment court appearances, still plies her trade...with the typically mixed results.  The story's main theme is the disappearance of her mentor Ranger, a mysterious man who seems to be always on the edge of the law and more of a James Bond type.  Ranger is being implicated in the murder of one of the sons of an aging local gangland boss.  One of Stephanie's competitors gets her company's assignment to capture and bring in Ranger...Stephanie herself cannot belief that Ranger could be a murderer and sets out to find him and investigate the killing on her own.  Weaving through the plot, as usual, is her family...including feisty Grandma Mazur who lives with her a spell, her friend Lula who works at the bail bonds office, and her cop/lover Joe Morelli, who seems secretly involved in the investigation as well.  Plus, Bob the golden retriever may have made his series debut here after Stephanie ends up virtually adopting him. And as usual, others are hounding her, including a creepy pair of men tailing her everywhere and often threatening her: they're after Ranger as well.  As good mystery books go, the plot undergoes a couple of interesting twists before it all gets turned upside down at the end.  I was okay with Hot Six, enough to go on to the next installment of Evanovich's series.  I enjoy the earthy first-person narration of protagonist Stephanie Plum, and the humor here is top-notch.  It does, however, portray violence as a more common, everyday occurrence than I'd like to imagine....