Created by Janet Evanovich & Dorien Kelly
Fans waiting impatiently to snatch up the latest Plum the moment it rolls out of EvanovichLand could take the edge off their screwball romantic crime jones with Love in a Nutshell, Evanovich’s 2012 attempt at creating a new heroine (with an able assist from Dorien Kelly): KATE APPLETON, a sort of accidental P.I. and relatively reasonable Plum facsimile.
Think of her as Stephanie-lite.
Dumped by her husband and recently canned from her job as a magazine editor, she reteats to her parents’ old summer place, The Nutshell, in Keene’s Harbor on Lake Michigan, with dreams of turning it into a B&B.
Except she has zilch in the way of money to do it, and a bartending gig isn’t going to cut it. Especially after she’s fired.
So she agrees to go undercover at a local brewery to find out who’s behind a string of vandalism, on behalf of hunky brewer Matt Culhane. Twenty grand is twenty grand, after all. And how dangerous could it be, really?
That’s the premise for Love in a Nutshell (2012), the first in this proposed series, and if it doesn’t quite qualify as hard-boiled, well, what did you expect?
Janet Evanovich is, of course, the Queen of the ‘Hood and the author of the bestselling Stephanie Plum novels. She lives in Florida now. Her partner-in-crime, at least for this new proposed series, is Dorien Kelly, at the time the prez of the Romance Writers of America. Dorien lives in Michigan with one or more of her three children, two very spoiled West Highland White Terriers, and a handicapped Coonhound named Bubba.
Not sure what went wrong, but there was only one other book in the series, and Kate, P.I. or not, isn’t even in it. The Husband List (2013) is set in 1894 New York City, and focusses on the romantic relationship between Caroline Maxwell and Jack Culhane, an ancestor of Matt.
NOVELS
- Love in a Nutshell (2012) | Buy this book | Kindle it!