Mystery Women Authors

Janet Evanovich Is (Not) Stephanie Plum

by Janet Evanovich

From Amazon.com

I got the idea for the Stephanie Plum series while watching the movie "Midnight Run" with Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro. I liked the idea of a bounty hunter. Bounty hunter has a nice all-American, Wild West sound to it. And I suspected you didn't have to know a lot to be a bounty hunter. And that was good, because I didn't know much.

I was living in northern Virginia at the time, which is an excellent place to live if you want to write about crime because there's a lot of it close by in D.C. I went to the Yellow Pages and called a few bailbondsmen, who in turn referred me to a few bounty hunters. I persuaded a couple of the bounty hunters to meet with me (free lunch) and began my education into the world of fugitive apprehension. I'd like to tell you I hung out with them, and we did a lot of exciting, dangerous stuff, but the truth is I couldn't talk anyone into taking me along on a bust. I thought I would have looked cool hauling ass down the dark streets of the nation's capitol, pistol-gripped shotgun in hand, but none of my bounty hunters saw the same image. They weren't stupid, after all. They looked at me and saw a slightly out-of-shape, middle-aged, very white woman who couldn't shoot and who would have stood out like an underbaked biscuit in a case filled with oversized loaves of pumpernickel. The only dangerous situation I ever experienced was during a lunch meeting. I was almost trampled by diners fleeing the restaurant after my bounty hunter companion's coat swung wide open, revealing a .44 magnum.

What I ultimately found out about bounty huntering is that it's always good to be inconspicuous, it helps a lot if you can lie like a dog, and sooner or later the bad guy will visit his girlfriend. Armed with this formidable bank of knowledge I plunged into the first book in the series and created Stephanie Plum, Jersey Girl, Bounty Hunter from Hell.

I'm four books down the road now, and when I finished the last manuscript, "Four to Score," I had to take my Mac PowerBook in to be professionally cleaned because the keys were sticking. When they opened it up, they found it was filled with Cheeto crumbs. So this might tell you something about my work habits. And then you might get to thinking about my heroine, Stephanie Plum, who's been known to pop a few Cheetos from time to time. And you might reach the conclusion that Stephanie and I are kindred spirits. And then you might get to wondering how the middle-aged white woman who can't shoot can be a kindred spirit to the "bring 'em back dead or alive" bounty hunter. If you've read any of the books in the series, you probably already know the answer to this. First off, Stephanie's not exactly the "bring 'em back dead or alive" type. Stephanie's more like "bring 'em back if you can." And while Stephanie and I have a lot in common, having a lot in common is not to be mistaken for an autobiographical series. Unlike my heroine, I didn't lose my virginity in a bakery. Nor have I ever killed anyone, pepper-sprayed anyone, stun-gunned anyone or been shot in the ass. I locked my art professor in the men's room once and almost got expelled from school the week before graduation ... but that's another story.

Stephanie Plum is a fictional character who carries some of my baggage, shares some of my relatives, some of my history, and dresses the way I'd dress if I could just lose another five pounds. When I created Stephanie I knew exactly what I wanted in my female protagonist. I'd already written 12 romance novels and knew what I liked and disliked about my 12 heroines. And I was very aware of my own limitations. When I started the series I'd never held a gun, knew nothing about law enforcement, and had fainted flat out five minutes into Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs." I'm currently writing the fifth Plum book, and Stephanie and I are coming up to speed together, learning what we can from real-life bounty hunters and sharing the occasional pizza and pitcher of beer with a Trenton cop. We're both pretty good at cussing, and we now know which end to hold on a .38. We still can't make it all the way through "Reservoir Dogs."

Page created by Leone Moffat.

Last updated 03-Mar-2002