Three to Get Deadly

The third installment in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series is set in Trenton, New Jersey, where Stephanie works as a bounty hunter for her cousin Vinnie Plum's bail bond agency. She receives an assignment she dreads: apprehending Moses Bedemier, known as Uncle Mo, a beloved candy store owner in the burg, the tight-knit, working-class neighborhood where Stephanie grew up. Mo was arrested for carrying a concealed .45 handgun during a routine traffic stop, then failed to appear for his court date, making him a fugitive. Stephanie knows the entire community will turn against her for pursuing someone they consider a local treasure, but Vinnie insists it is a simple, low-level case.

Lula, a former sex worker now working as a file clerk in Vinnie's office, insists on tagging along. When they arrive at Mo's candy store on Ferris Street, they find it closed for the first time in decades. His upstairs apartment is dark and locked. Neighbors, including Stephanie's former teacher Mrs. Steeger, refuse to help and criticize Stephanie for going after a good man. Mo's sister on Staten Island is genuinely surprised to learn he is not at the store. After finding a spare key in Mo's garage, Stephanie and Lula search his apartment but discover only ordinary belongings and no clues. Mo's blue Honda Civic is missing, his garage door was left open, and no one seems to know him on a personal level. He has no girlfriend, no close friends, and no confidants, a pattern Stephanie finds increasingly strange.

Joe Morelli, a plainclothes Trenton cop temporarily assigned to homicide and a man with whom Stephanie shares a complicated romantic history stretching back to her teenage years, takes an interest in the case. He warns Stephanie to be careful, noting Mo's protective neighbors, and Stephanie shares her uneasy feeling that something is off about Mo's disappearance.

A secondary case pulls Stephanie deeper into trouble. Jackie, a sex worker and friend of Lula's, asks Stephanie to find her stolen Chrysler, taken by her boyfriend Cameron Brown when he vanished. Stephanie and Lula locate the car at the RiverEdge Apartments but find no sign of Brown. Morelli hints that something unusual is happening on the streets: Drug dealers are pulling back and some have disappeared.

Vinnie reveals that Mo is gay and was seen with a male companion, and Lula reports that a sex worker on Stark Street saw Mo two days earlier looking for a mid-level drug figure. Stephanie returns to Mo's store at night to search it. While inside, a large man with dreadlocks forces open the back door and throws her against the wall, knocking her unconscious. When she comes to, the intruder lies dead in the hallway, shot in the back of the head. The victim is later identified as Ronald Anders, one of Vinnie's skips wanted on drug charges. Stephanie has no idea who killed him, and some in the police department consider her a suspect.

The body count rises. Jackie discovers Cameron Brown's frozen corpse in a Dumpster at the RiverEdge complex and empties half a clip into the already-dead body before Stephanie and Lula convince her to enter a detox clinic. Stephanie and Lula also pursue Leroy Watkins, a drug dealer known as Snake. On their first visit he fires a shotgun through his apartment door; on a later visit they find him dead in his closet with a bullet hole in his forehead. Morelli reveals that ballistics link all three murders to the same gun.

The investigation darkens when Morelli and Stephanie discover a foul smell in Mo's candy store cellar and unearth four bodies buried in garbage bags beneath the dirt floor. The news explodes across the burg. Far from condemning Mo, many residents view him as a vigilante hero who took action against the drug trade.

Throughout the search, Stephanie faces escalating threats from masked men. In one incident, a gunman shoots at her in her parking lot. In another, three men offer her money to abandon the case. In the most violent encounter, they lure her to the candy store with a false tip, pepper-spray her, burn her hand with a cigarette, and threaten to kill her. She is saved only by the intervention of Mrs. Steeger and another neighbor.

Stephanie catches fleeting glimpses of Mo. A teenage neighbor reports a light in the store at 2 A.M. Stephanie races over and calls Ranger, her mentor and a supremely skilled bounty hunter, for backup. Mo appears but refuses to turn himself in, saying he has hired a lawyer. When he spots Ranger's BMW idling with its keys in the ignition, Mo threatens Stephanie with a large can of pepper spray and steals the car.

An earlier tip from Jackie proves valuable: She saw Mo near an apartment building on Montgomery Street, next to a storefront mission and near a Freedom Church. Stephanie and Ranger canvass the building door-to-door but find no solid leads. On a later occasion, Stephanie and Lula spot Mo driving a car with a long, lumpy object wrapped in garbage bags strapped to the roof. They chase him down Route 1. A cord snaps, and the body of drug dealer Elliot Harp catapults off Mo's car onto the hood of Lula's Firebird. Mo escapes. Unable to call for help, Stephanie and Lula stuff the body into Lula's trunk and drive to Morelli's house, where he arranges transfer to the police station.

Morelli reveals that Mo has hired Dickie Orr, Stephanie's ex-husband, as his attorney. Mo claims he did not personally kill anyone and is considering turning himself in. Through a combination of pressuring Dickie and following leads from the burg grapevine, Stephanie pieces together the full picture. Mo is a secret underground pornographic filmmaker who recruited young performers through drug dealers. When one dealer named Jamal Brousse began blackmailing him, Mo asked Reverend Bill, the fire-and-brimstone preacher who runs the Freedom Church, to scare Brousse off. Instead, Bill killed Brousse and became obsessed with eliminating dealers, pressing Mo for more names and burying the bodies in Mo's cellar. Bill's congregation organized a death squad that expanded to killing drug users through staged overdoses. The gun Mo was carrying when he was arrested turned out to be the weapon used on Brousse, which is why Mo panicked and jumped bail on what had seemed a minor firearms charge. Stephanie realizes that Morelli withheld this crucial detail from her all along.

When two masked men invade Stephanie's apartment and threaten to inject her hamster Rex with heroin as a warning, Rex bites his captor, and Stephanie fights back. Her elderly neighbors rush into the hallway armed with handguns and a rifle, and the attackers are subdued. Morelli confirms both men belong to Reverend Bill's congregation.

Vinnie's contacts provide directions to a rural bungalow south of the city where Mo films his movies. Stephanie drives there alone and finds Mo inside, terrified that Reverend Bill will find him. Ranger arrives separately through the back door as backup. A Freedom Church van pulls into the driveway, blocked by Lula's Firebird; Lula followed Stephanie on her own initiative. A man with a rocket launcher destroys Stephanie's pickup truck, and the attackers demand Mo. Ranger provides covering fire while Stephanie, Mo, and Lula escape through the woods. Mo is shot but survives surgery. Morelli and a squad of police, who had been tailing the van, arrest the attackers.

In the aftermath, Reverend Bill and his death squad face federal charges. Mo, recovering from his wound, awaits trial for his role in the killings. Weeks later, Stephanie is home watching a Rangers game and eating fried chicken when Morelli knocks on her door. They share food and banter. He invites her to see his new house, evoking their long, charged history together. He kisses her neck, and the novel closes on a note of unresolved romantic tension.