Motor Mouth - Janet Evanovich

...'I never saw that coming!' Motor Mouth, her latest novel, is no exception to these rules.

Motor Mouth is the second in the Barnaby series (the first was Metro Girl) and picks up a few months of the last book left off. This said, you don't need to have read Metro Girl to understand and follow Motor Mouth, as only the characters follow through, the stories are completely independent.


°°°The Story°°°

...of increasingly complex criminal masterminds. Motor Mouth will keep you needing to read the next page, and not putting it down (especially to sleep I found lol). Like all of Janet Evanovich's crime novels, it is an action-packed multi-car crash of an adventure, full of shady dealings, cheating racecar drivers, stolen technology, drive-thru windows and destruction of personal property. And you might even get some tips on dealing with righteous indignation, ... more

Janet Evanovich is one of my all time favorite writers. Her books are always witty and hilariously funny. I'm constantly left shocked as to the ending and about various plot points on the way - 'I never saw that coming!' Motor Mouth, her latest novel, is no exception to these rules.

Motor Mouth is the second in the Barnaby series (the first was Metro Girl) and picks up a few months of the last book left off. This said, you don't need to have read Metro Girl to understand and follow Motor Mouth, as only the characters follow through, the stories are completely independent.

°°°The Story°°°

The tale starts at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, where it is the last race of the season. Our lead heroine is Alexandra (Alex) Barnaby who works as a race-day spotter for NASCAR driver Sam Hooker. Her position from high above the grandstand means she has the best view of the track, and sees things she wouldn't usually expect to see, and also people who wouldn't usually be there. There's dodgy goings on in the air.

Initially just trying to help out a friend, Alex and Sam quickly find themselves involved in a kidnapping, stolen racecar hauler, a ransomed Saint Bernard, several bizarre murders, as well as a burned out yacht. They also have the police after them - not the most convenient thing when you're trying to hide but are a national celebrity like Sam Hooker. All the clues end up pointing directly to them, even though all they are actually guilty of is interfering.

They are also guilty of avoiding the NASCAR awards banquet they are both contractually supposed to attend. But there isn't much time for social functions when you're on the run.

Some characters from the previous book return to lend a helping hand in Sam and Alex's hour of need - super cigar roller Rosa Florez and the queen of wholesale fruit Felicia Ibarra. There are a few funny scenes when Alex and Sam find out they have one very small single bed to share between them, and a very large dog to shoe horn into the room as well.

In the next week or so, Alex and Sam (and of course Beans, his Saint Bernard) travel back and forth, from Miami, Florida to Concord, North Carolina and back to Miami on the trail of increasingly complex criminal masterminds. Motor Mouth will keep you needing to read the next page, and not putting it down (especially to sleep I found lol). Like all of Janet Evanovich's crime novels, it is an action-packed multi-car crash of an adventure, full of shady dealings, cheating racecar drivers, stolen technology, drive-thru windows and destruction of personal property. And you might even get some tips on dealing with righteous indignation, stealing an eight-wheeler, stashing a dead body along the way (just keep your hungry St Bernard out of the way while you do so!). Also like all of Janet Evanovich's work, there is a certain level of sexual tension between the two leads, which fluctuates as the story progresses. In this case Sam Hooker and Alex Barnaby.

°°°The Main Characters°°°

*Alexandra Barnaby*
Alex, or sometimes Barney, is a 20-something race day spotter and a part of the Research and Development crew for the Stiller Racing team. During races, she works on a two-way radio basis with Sam Hooker while he drives his racecar, who also happens to be his ex. 'Ex' after he ended up in bed with a sale clerk.

In her youth, Alex worked in her dad's garage in Baltimore all through high school and during summer breaks when she was at college. She earned herself a reputation for being an awesome mechanic, but an awful racecar driver. But at least she could rebuild her engines after smashing them to bits in races!

If you have read any of Janet Evanovich's Plum Series, you will identify some Stephanie in Alex.

*Sam Hooker*
Sort of the opposite to Alex - great driving the racecars, useless with a wrench. With sun bleached blonde hair and a nice body with some muscle on it, we're told he looks like a college kid, except for his eyes. 'There are lines are the corners that tell his age and grit. And there's a depth that comes from living hard and gaining something from it.' Sam is quite a manly man and at times seems quite sexist, but it's all taken in a funny, lighthearted fashion.

*Beans*
Sam's lovable 180 pound Saint Bernard that, at various times, manages to both hinder and help the mission progress forwards. His best moment has to be trying to take a chunk out of a corpse, failing, and leaving big, identifying tooth marks on the poor guy!

*Gobbles*
A self-confessed loser, Jefferson Davis Warner, aka Gobbles, is a fellow spotter with Alex who inadvertently gets himself involved in the mess and locked in a trailer for quite a while. He's slightly depressed after recently separating from his wife and seems to spend a lot of time thinking about his problems with 'the man in the boat'

°°°My opinion°°°

Motor Mouth (and Metro Girl) is not intended to be as funny as Janet Evanovich's other books. They are supposed to carry a more serious tone. Most of the time this is true, but Janet Evanovich always seems to slip a little bit of humor into the most unexpected places, which will have you laughing out loud in places.

The story is believable in the sense that each event could happen. But for all of the situations to happen to the same two people would just be insanely bad luck, and would have ended up in prison about 50pages into the book! Then again, its written in a fantasy world, where none of the characters really exist anyway, so who cares about realism!

I would think this book would appeal to mostly women, of any age 17 and up. Last time I said a book would be mostly for women I got several comments from men saying they liked the book I review too, so I'm not saying men can't read this, just that my opinion would be its mostly for women. There is a fair amount of bad language in it, and a lot of sexual references, but it isn't overly explicit at any point and you wouldn't lose much if you didn't fully understand the 'dirty' jokes.

Negative points? I don't think there are any negative points! If I were the edited, I'd make the font in the book smaller, but that's the only thing I can criticize!

°°°Other bits°°°

Maybe it's just me, but one of my questions while reading the first book was 'what's NASCAR?' as it wasn't something I had not heard of before. It turns out NASCAR is 'National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing'. It looks similar to F1, in that they drive round and round a track a large amount of times. The cars of NASCAR look more like rally cars than F1. You don't really need any understanding of NASCAR to appreciate these books, as very little of them is actually about NASCAR, and where it is, Janet Evanovich explains more than enough that you get a good picture, and manages to keep the story flowing at the same time. (You can read Janet Evanovich's illustrated guide to NASCAR here http://www.evanovich.com/Metro/MotorNASCAR.html )

Other books by Janet Evanovich include the Plum Series (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to get deadly, etc) and the Full Series of romance novels (Full House, Full Tilt, Full Speed, etc). I would recommend reading any of these books as they are all fantastic, and each series is slightly different. The Barnaby Series (Metro Girl and Motor Mouth) are more focused on amateurs investigating and trying to solve crimes. The Plum Series is a funny take on Fugitive Apprehension. The Full Series are romance novels. For anyone who has read any of the Plum series, you will defiantly see a certain amount of Stephanie Plum coming through in Alex, but Hooker isn't a Morelli or a Ranger.

I bought my copy new from Amazon. At the moment there is only the hardback edition available, which has the RRP of £12.99. The Amazon listing is currently at £7.79 and you can probably pick it up from Ebay occasionally. Next October (2007) the paperback will be released and sold for £6.99

1. Hardcover: 400 pages
2. Publisher: HarperCollins (2 May 2006)
3. Language English
4. ISBN: 0007176244
5. Authors website: http://www.evanovich.com
6. Book specific page: http://www.evanovich.com/Metro/motormouth.html
   If you go to the Motor Mouth link you can read the first two chapters online. Scroll down and click 'excerpt'

Five out of Five for this one!

 

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