Hot Six (stephanie Plum, #6)

Hot Six is the sixth novel in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, following a wisecracking bounty hunter in Trenton, New Jersey.

After a prologue set five months earlier, in which Stephanie Plum reconnects romantically with Joe Morelli, a Trenton police detective she has known since childhood, the story opens with Stephanie talking a former classmate, Carol Zabo, off a bridge railing. Carol was arrested for shoplifting and fleeing the scene of a traffic accident, and she is threatening to jump into the Delaware River. Stephanie promises to get the officer involved, Brian Simon, to drop the charges.

At the bail bonds office of her cousin Vinnie Plum, Stephanie learns that Ranger, a fellow bounty hunter, her mentor, and someone she finds dangerously attractive, has failed to appear for a court date on a minor weapons charge. Connie Rosolli, the office manager, explains that a downtown building owned by Alexander Ramos, an international arms dealer, recently burned. Inside, investigators found Alexander's youngest son, Homer Ramos, shot and burned. A hidden security camera captured Ranger entering the building with Homer and leaving alone thirty-five minutes before the fire started. Vinnie wants Stephanie to bring Ranger in, but she refuses, and Vinnie assigns the case to Joyce Barnhardt, Stephanie's longtime rival.

Stephanie also receives files for other fugitives who failed to appear in court, including Morris Munson, arrested for vehicular manslaughter, rape, and attempted cremation of his ex-wife, and Walter "Moon Man" Dunphy, a harmless stoner. Dunphy comes in easily but accidentally sets Stephanie's Honda Civic on fire by smoking marijuana in the front seat. He later brings her a loaner car from his friend Dougie Kruper.

Two enforcers, Mitchell and Habib, begin following Stephanie in a black Lincoln, working for an unnamed employer who wants Ranger found. Morelli also appears, sharing what police know about the security tape and asking Stephanie to relay a message to Ranger.

Ranger surfaces in Stephanie's elevator one morning, his appearance altered. He tells her someone killed Homer after their meeting and denies starting the fire. He skipped his court date because he cannot risk detention while people are hunting him. He asks Stephanie to conduct surveillance on Hannibal Ramos, Alexander's firstborn son and manager of the family's arms empire, who keeps a town house in Ewing Township.

Stephanie's attempts to catch Munson go badly. He rams her loaner car and attacks with a tire iron. On a second attempt, with Lula, a fellow bounty hunter and Stephanie's regular partner, Munson sets Stephanie's shirttail on fire before escaping. Later, Munson breaks into Stephanie's apartment, planning to stab her to build an insanity defense for his existing charges. Stephanie shoots him in the foot, but he escapes. Meanwhile, Grandma Mazur moves into Stephanie's apartment after a fight with Stephanie's father, cramping Stephanie's romantic life. Brian Simon dumps his enormous golden retriever, Bob, on Stephanie as payment for her favor with Carol.

Stephanie begins nightly surveillance of Hannibal's town house, climbing a pine tree behind his privacy fence. On her first attempt, she falls into his backyard and claims to be looking for her cat. When she returns, Hannibal catches her with a flashlight and pulls a gun. She flees. Despite the danger, she notices the house appears unoccupied, yet she hears a toilet flush inside, suggesting someone is hiding there.

Through a contact at the Department of Motor Vehicles, Stephanie identifies a woman who visited Hannibal as Terry Gilman, who works for her uncle Vito Grizolli, a local Mob boss. Ranger explains that the visit concerns reestablishing territorial boundaries between organized crime and the Ramos gun operation after Homer's drug dealing disrupted them. Ranger begins making late-night visits to Stephanie's apartment, slipping past her locks. He asks her to investigate Cynthia Lotte, Homer's girlfriend, who works as a receptionist for Stephanie's ex-husband. The visit yields nothing, though a growing romantic tension between Stephanie and Ranger complicates her relationship with Morelli.

At Ranger's request, Stephanie follows Hannibal to the Ramos family compound in Deal, New Jersey. Alexander Ramos jumps into her car uninvited, demanding cigarettes. Over ouzo at a local bar, he calls Homer stupid and greedy and hints at disposing of a problem by putting it on a boat.

A crucial clue comes from Dunphy, who mentions overhearing Homer pick up a rug supposedly worth a million dollars from Art's Carpets, a store owned by Arturo Stolle. Morelli connects the dots: Homer was serving as a bagman, or money courier, for Stolle's drug operation, and the gym bag Homer carried into the meeting with Ranger likely contained drug money. Stolle is missing a large sum and blames Ranger, explaining why Mitchell and Habib have been following Stephanie.

Stephanie and Lula finally capture Munson by ambushing him in his shower and tackling him in the alley when he flees.

During a break-in at Hannibal's town house, Stephanie and Lula find evidence someone is living in the guest room. Cynthia Lotte arrives with a key, looking for jewelry Homer stole from her. In the garage, they discover a dead man in Cynthia's silver Porsche, shot three times in the forehead. Morelli later identifies the victim as Junior Macaroni, one of Stolle's enforcers.

The danger escalates. Stolle summons Stephanie to his carpet store and threatens to hurt her to pressure Ranger. Mitchell and Habib kidnap Stephanie and take her to an abandoned factory, planning to cut off her finger and send it to Ranger. She stalls, then kicks through the water-damaged bathroom wall and escapes through a window.

To resolve a crisis involving Carol Zabo, who faces kidnapping charges from Joyce, Stephanie and Lula recruit Morgan, a man Lula knows from her former life as a sex worker, who physically resembles Ranger. They pass Morgan off to Joyce in a dark parking lot and get Joyce to sign a document dropping the charges. When Joyce pulls over for a flat tire, Mitchell and Habib grab "Ranger," driving off with the wrong man.

The climax comes when Homer Ramos, very much alive, confronts Stephanie in her apartment with a gun. The body in the fire was someone else. Homer is desperate for the gym bag of money before his container ship sails from Newark. He reveals he tortured and killed Cynthia Lotte trying to find it. He shoots Stephanie, grazing her arm. Ranger appears behind him, stuns him, and cuffs him.

Morelli later explains the full picture: Hannibal orchestrated a fake death to remove a murder contract on his brother, killing an unidentified person in the fire and framing Ranger as the scapegoat. Homer secretly switched the bag's cash for newsprint before the meeting, cheating Stolle. Ranger had been acting as an arbitrator between crime factions, trying to prevent a war. Homer plea-bargains and turns on his father and Stolle. Mitchell and Habib, charged with kidnapping, also give up Stolle.

Stephanie realizes the real money ended up with Dunphy and Dougie, who found the gym bag in a car-wash garbage can after Cynthia threw it away and bought a big-screen television with the proceeds. Stephanie decides to keep this to herself.

In the final scene, Morelli blurts out to his visiting mother and grandmother that he is going to marry Stephanie. She protests she was never asked. The mothers leave, and Morelli pulls Stephanie close. The novel ends with the question of marriage left open.