Twisted Twenty-Six (stephanie Plum, #26)

The 26th installment in the Stephanie Plum series opens with Stephanie, a bail bonds enforcement agent in Trenton, New Jersey, recounting that her Grandma Mazur married Jimmy Rosolli, a high-ranking mob figure, during a trip to the Bahamas. Jimmy dropped dead of a heart attack 45 minutes after the ceremony. Stephanie escorts Grandma to Jimmy's viewing at the local funeral home, where Jimmy's three elderly sisters, Angie, Tootie, and Rose, confront Grandma at the casket, calling her a gold digger and threatening her over Jimmy's money.

That evening, Stephanie's boyfriend, Joe Morelli, a Trenton police detective, reveals that Jimmy was known as the "Keeper of the Keys" among a group of aging mobsters called the La-Z-Boys, who meet in recliner chairs at the Mole Hole, a strip club Jimmy co-owned. The keys are now missing, and the La-Z-Boys are in a panic.

As Stephanie works her regular job capturing fugitives alongside Lula, a former sex worker who works at the bail bonds office, she confides that she feels stagnant in her career and relationships. Her life grows more dangerous when a Molotov cocktail is thrown through her parents' living room window, presumably targeting Grandma. Stephanie grabs the burning bottle and throws it back outside, where it explodes against her car. Two men in a black Cadillac later approach Stephanie, claiming someone wants to talk to her. She declines and calls Ranger, the owner of the elite security firm Rangeman and the other man in her life. Ranger assigns a protective escort and warns that if the keys don't surface, things will get violent. Meanwhile, Stephanie's apartment is ransacked in an obvious search for the keys, though her hamster Rex is found unharmed.

At Saturday's funeral, Tootie rams her walker into Grandma's back at the graveside, and Grandma retaliates by swinging her heavy patent leather purse, which conceals her .45 handgun. At the wake, Stephanie enters the Mole Hole's back room and confronts the La-Z-Boys. Benny the Skootch claims a witness saw Jimmy grab Grandma and speak to her before dying, and issues a 24-hour ultimatum: Produce the keys or the family's safety cannot be guaranteed. Lou Salgusta, a sadistic specialist in torture by fire, graphically threatens to burn his initials into Stephanie and Grandma. When the family returns home, they find their house has also been broken into and searched.

Grandma insists Jimmy's actual last words were "Oh crap apples" and that he never mentioned keys. The following day, Rose tries to run Grandma and Stephanie over with her car. Grandma shoots off Rose's side mirror.

The situation escalates sharply when two masked men burst into Stephanie's parents' kitchen with guns and attempt to kidnap Grandma. One shoots Stephanie in the upper arm. Her mother charges the gunman with a hot iron, knocking him unconscious, while the second man flees. The downed gunman is identified as Marcus Velez, a vagrant hired for $50. The second attacker, Sylvester Lucca, a personal trainer at the upscale Miracle Fitness gym, is later found dead behind the bonds office dumpster, killed to keep him silent.

Julius Roman, the most reasonable of the remaining La-Z-Boys, tells Stephanie that someone besides the La-Z-Boys is after Grandma and hints at suspicions about who hired Lucca but refuses to share. Shortly after, Roman is shot execution-style in front of his house, reducing the group to three: Benny, Charlie Shine, and Salgusta.

Ranger provides Stephanie with a safer car and silver cross medallion necklaces for her and Grandma that serve as panic buttons. He and Morelli agree to pull back visible protection and rely on surveillance, hoping to draw the kidnapper into the open. Stephanie captures Charlie Shine with help from Ranger and his second-in-command, Tank, storming the Mole Hole's back room. She also tackles Steven Cross, a wealthy jewel thief who missed his court date, on an airport tarmac as he tries to flee by private plane, saving the bonds office from a potentially devastating financial loss.

Grandma disappears from a church bake sale. Her purse, containing her gun and phone, is found by a side door. The panic medallions turn out to be nonfunctional. Stephanie and Ranger pursue every lead, visiting Jimmy's first ex-wife Barbara Rosolli and her daughter Jeanine Stupe, and questioning the Miracle Fitness owner Sidney DeSalle, but find nothing conclusive. Stephanie brings Benny a pizza in the hospital, where he is awaiting a heart stent. Benny reveals that the kidnapper is ransoming Grandma to the La-Z-Boys but does not know who it is.

Stephanie settles on Barbara as her prime suspect and goes to her house alone to lay a bluff, claiming she has figured everything out. Barbara seems unaffected. That night, back at her apartment, Stephanie hears a kitten outside her door. She opens it and is hit with a stun gun.

She wakes bound with duct tape inside a recycling bin being transported in a truck and is delivered to a windowless room where Grandma is chained to a cot. The kidnapper is Bernard Stupe, Jeanine's quiet, seemingly unremarkable husband. Bernie reveals he hired Lucca for the original kidnapping attempt, killed Lucca when Lucca panicked, and killed Julius Roman when Roman witnessed the body dump and demanded a cut. Bernie's plan is to ransom Grandma to the La-Z-Boys and escape his hated life at the family concrete plant, which his father gave to his younger brother instead of him. Stephanie's bluff, which Jeanine innocently relayed to Bernie, forced him to kidnap Stephanie as well.

Sunday morning, Shine and Salgusta arrive with suitcases of cash for the ransom exchange. Bernie takes two suitcases and walks out. Two gunshots follow, and Shine drags Bernie's body back inside. Salgusta unpacks his torture equipment to begin his signature ritual of burning his initials into victims but discovers his precision soldering torch is out of fuel. Neither man has matches or a lighter. Insisting on his methodical system, Salgusta drags Shine off to Home Depot for a replacement cartridge.

With the men gone, Stephanie stretches her chain to reach Bernie's body, retrieves padlock keys from his pockets, and frees herself and Grandma. They flee to the adjacent truck garage, where Stephanie climbs into a massive concrete mixer truck and starts the engine. When Shine wrenches the driver's door open, Stephanie grabs Salgusta's large Bernzomatic torch and blasts Shine with a jet of blue flame. She slams the door, crashes through the bay door, and races onto Route 1. Police and Rangeman converge on her. Ranger pulls her from the truck and holds her while she cries. Shine and Salgusta escape.

Monday afternoon, Stephanie and Grandma attend the reading of Jimmy's will. The lawyer reveals that Jimmy was completely broke, with no assets beyond burial insurance. Grandma cancels her travel plans, and Barbara vows to contest the will.

At home, two of Benny's associates deliver a gift: Jimmy's La-Z-Boy recliner, sent as thanks for the pizza Stephanie brought Benny in the hospital. When Stephanie's father lifts the seat cushion, two long keys lie underneath, engraved with six initials. They are keys to a safe. Jimmy kept them "close to him" all along, hidden in his chair at the Mole Hole, and no one thought to look. Stephanie's mother urges them to turn the keys over to police, but Grandma refuses, insisting the keys are rightfully hers. Stephanie agrees, and the novel ends with the two of them setting off to find whatever the keys unlock.