Fortune and Glory: Tantalizing Twenty-Seven (stephanie Plum, #27)

This novel in the Stephanie Plum series follows Stephanie Plum, a fugitive apprehension agent (bounty hunter) in Trenton, New Jersey, as she hunts for a mob treasure while keeping her grandmother alive and her chaotic personal life intact.

The central conflict stems from recent events in which two mob hit men, Lou Salgusta and Charlie Shine, kidnapped Stephanie and her maternal grandmother, Grandma Mazur. Both men belong to a group called the La-Z-Boys, six mob-connected men who co-own a strip club called the Mole Hole. They believe Grandma holds the keys to a hidden treasure. Stephanie and Grandma escaped but not before witnessing the two men murder someone, giving the criminals further motivation to recapture them.

Grandma did discover two unusual five-inch keys hidden in the La-Z-Boy recliner belonging to her late husband, Jimmy Rosolli, who served as the group's "Keeper of the Keys," the member entrusted with safeguarding the treasure's keys. Jimmy died shortly after their wedding, and another member, Benny the Skootch, unknowingly gave Grandma the chair. The keys are believed to open a booby-trapped safe. Grandma insists Stephanie help her find the treasure, a decision that contributed to Stephanie's breakup with her on-again, off-again boyfriend, Joe Morelli, a plainclothes Trenton police detective who considers the hunt reckless.

Stephanie and her coworker Lula, a former sex worker turned bounty hunter's assistant, pursue Salgusta into the Mole Hole's underground tunnel system but are nearly killed when he launches a fireball at them. As they escape, a mysterious woman in expensive black clothing descends into the tunnel without explanation. This woman, Gabriela, eventually revealed to be a professional treasure retrieval specialist, begins appearing repeatedly: at the bonds office asking about Shine, at a La-Z-Boy member's grave, and leaving the Mole Hole in a black Mercedes. Stephanie follows Gabriela but quickly loses the tail.

Stephanie visits Benny, who reveals that the safe is rigged to explode if opened without both keys and that each La-Z-Boy received a personal clue to the treasure's location. Two clues from deceased members were stored in the Mole Hole's back-room safe. Stephanie enlists Ranger, whose real name is Carlos Manoso, a former special forces operative who runs a high-end security firm called Rangeman. He is the other significant man in Stephanie's life, and with Morelli out of the picture, they begin a physical relationship. Ranger helps Stephanie break into the Mole Hole safe, where they find two clues: "ACE it" (clue #1) and "Philadelphia" (clue #3).

Alongside the treasure hunt, Stephanie juggles her regular bounty hunting work. She captures George Potts, a man with extensive allergies, PTSD, and persistent anxiety who was arrested for public indecency. When Potts refuses to call his parents for bail, Stephanie pays it herself. He becomes fanatically devoted, declaring himself her lifelong bodyguard and camping outside her apartment. Though constantly annoying, he proves useful at critical moments.

The danger escalates steadily. Stephanie and Lula find Salgusta in the basement of the Hotel Margo, where he attacks with knives and a flamethrower, igniting stored marijuana next to crates of explosives. The blast destroys the hotel. Later, they discover that a sex worker named Patches, who had been seeing Shine, has been shot dead in his signature execution style. Shine also brings in muscle from Miami, including enforcers Ed Gruman and Chick Rizer, who pull guns on Stephanie and Grandma at the Mole Hole. Potts bursts in and creates enough chaos for them to escape. Shine's men later kidnap Potts, but Ranger leads a team to rescue him and forces the Miami henchmen onto a plane back to Florida.

Stephanie's personal life grows more complicated when she sees Gabriela's Mercedes parked outside Morelli's house. Through the kitchen window, she watches Gabriela laughing with Morelli over Chardonnay, viewing Gabriela as both a romantic rival and a treasure competitor.

Progress on the clues comes in pieces. Benny, grieving his wife Carla's death, agrees to partner with Stephanie and Grandma, sharing his clue: "pink" (clue #4). Ranger's team recovers Salgusta's clue from his old La-Z-Boy chair at a consignment store: the number "50" (clue #2). At Carla's funeral, Grandma spots Salgusta hiding with his flamethrower. She commandeers the steering wheel of Ranger's Porsche and drives after him. Salgusta sets the car ablaze, but everyone escapes and Ranger captures Salgusta on foot. Benny then dies of a heart attack at the reception. Grandma discovers that the dates inscribed inside her and Jimmy's wedding bands do not match their actual wedding date, suspecting the numbers are the safe combination and constitute Jimmy's hidden clue.

Shine sends more men after Stephanie. Two thugs attempt to kidnap her in her parking lot, but Gabriela drives her Mercedes into both of them, saving Stephanie's life. Shine later kills both injured men execution-style.

The breakthrough comes during a drive toward Atlantic City. Potts realizes "ACE it" stands for the Atlantic City Expressway, "50" refers to Route 50, and Route 50 becomes Philadelphia Avenue. Following these directions, they find Bowman Storage, a complex of pink concrete block units on Philadelphia Avenue, satisfying the final clue. At a nearby safe house, Stephanie discovers that Shine's men have kidnapped her mother instead of Grandma.

Stephanie tracks Shine's convoy to a rural house. Gabriela appears and helps Stephanie extract her mother through a window. A gunfight erupts, and Stephanie fakes a faint to distract a gunman while Gabriela takes him down with a flying kick. Ranger's team and police surround the house, and Ranger retrieves the two safe keys from Shine before handing him over.

At the storage facility, Ranger's tech specialist Ramone opens the safe using the keys and the wedding band numbers. The safe is empty except for old comic books; the booby trap was a bluff. Gabriela reveals she represents the legal owner of stolen diamonds and has been following Stephanie because Stephanie's instincts proved more effective than Gabriela's own investigation. Under the La-Z-Boy recliner in the storage unit, Ranger finds Jimmy's actual final clue: a note reading "RIP, Anthony" and old keys. Anthony Rosolli, Jimmy's grandfather, is buried at Saint John's Cemetery outside Egg Harbor.

In the cemetery's Rosolli family chapel, they descend into an underground crypt and find Anthony's niche unsealed and his casket empty. A tunnel behind the niche leads to a concrete bunker containing the real safe. Gabriela attempts to open it but enters the wrong starting number, triggering the genuine booby trap. Ranger pulls her through a fire door just as three explosions destroy the bunker and the chapel, scattering 174 flawless diamonds across the surrounding field. The group recovers roughly half before authorities arrive.

That evening, Morelli visits Stephanie with wine and cupcakes and shares the full backstory: 18 years earlier, the La-Z-Boys stole $30 million in diamonds from a Manhattan brownstone. The owner distributed the diamonds' unique identifying fingerprints worldwide, making them impossible to fence. Jimmy brought one stone to a trader to fund his honeymoon; the trader identified it and alerted the owner, who hired Gabriela to recover the stones. Ranger privately gives Stephanie a single diamond as a finder's fee. The novel closes with Morelli and Stephanie sharing cupcakes and a rekindled romantic connection.