Four to Score

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Vinnie hires Joyce and Stephanie ends up on Morelli's couch
2. Maxine Nowicki and Eddie's thousand dollar puzzle
3. Mothers and fingers and a manager who talked
4. Lula and Grandma Mazur and Sally Sweet
5. Counterfeit plates in a dry cleaner basement
6. Airport taser and a ride on the Ducati
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I picked up Four to Score because Three to Get Deadly left Stephanie broke and tangled between two men, and I wanted to see if book four would push her forward. It does in small ways, which ended up being the fun. This is the fourth Stephanie Plum novel, published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press, the first edition running 294 pages with ISBN 9780312185862. I read it over three nights on the couch with tea going cold, laughing at parts I probably should not have laughed at. If you know the first three, you know the rhythm. Vinnie hands Stephanie a file that looks simple. The file wrecks her life. Her cars die. Morelli scowls. Ranger shows up with better gear. Lula says something wild that turns out to be useful.

What surprised me was how much runs on paper. Notes. Coded clues. Threatening letters. Love letters Eddie wishes he never wrote. Counterfeit twenties that feel off. I expected another chase around Trenton with pepper spray and bad luck. I got that, plus a puzzle hunt to Point Pleasant and Atlantic City, plus a stalker leaving warnings, plus a basement I still think about when I do laundry late.

Vinnie hires Joyce and Stephanie ends up on Morelli's couch

Trouble starts at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, where Connie files and Vinnie schemes. He has hired Joyce Barnhardt as another bounty hunter. If you remember book one, Joyce is Stephanie's high school rival, now trying to steal skips and boyfriends with equal energy. Stephanie is furious. Vinnie tells her to be professional, which from him means stop complaining and bring in your person first.

Her person is Maxine Nowicki. More on her below. The point here is Stephanie's home life falls apart at the same time.

She still works for Vinnie for rent money. She still has Rex, the hamster in a soup can who runs his wheel at night. She still checks in with her parents in the Burg, where her mother pushes marriage talk and her father goes quiet and Grandma Mazur asks about viewings.

Joe Morelli is still the Trenton cop she has known since childhood. He wants her safe. She wants to work without being locked inside. He bends rules for her. She tests his patience. In this book they stop pretending they can stay apart.

Ranger is still the other pole. Ex Special Forces, now running a security company, still helping Vinnie on high risk files, still giving Stephanie guns she loses and lessons she half remembers. He barely talks. When he does, she listens, even if she argues first. Early on he pulls her into a side job with Kenny Martin, a Grizolli relative who missed court after armed robbery. Ranger wants help lifting Kenny away from his cousins at Stiva's funeral home. It is brief but it shows the difference. Morelli wants backup and paperwork. Ranger wants timing.

Then Stephanie's apartment gets firebombed. Someone throws an incendiary through her bedroom window while she is out. The place is gutted. She grabs Rex and a bag and goes to Morelli's house because nowhere else feels safe that night.

Living with Morelli shifts the banter. He cooks. She tries to be a good guest and fails. His grandmother has put the Evil Eye on her, which in Burg logic might mean pregnancy, and Stephanie spends chapters half worried and half annoyed. I rolled my eyes at first. On reflection it fits. In this neighborhood older women use superstition the way Morelli uses a badge. Stephanie can face a man with a gun while holding dead pepper spray, yet gets rattled by an old woman's stare. That tells you where she is from.

They bicker about dishes. They share a bed. They avoid promises. He does not want her chasing Maxine while threats pile up. She does not want to sit inside while Joyce collects her fee. Neither gives in for long.

Maxine Nowicki and Eddie's thousand dollar puzzle

Maxine Nowicki grew up in Trenton, played high school softball, waits tables at the Silver Dollar Diner. She was arrested for taking her ex-boyfriend's car. The car came back. Maxine skipped court. Vinnie bonded her, so Stephanie has to bring her in.

The ex is Eddie Kuntz. Pumped up muscles. Thin confidence. He eats Saturday chicken at Stephanie's parents' house and says Maxine contacted him. She promises to make him squirm. She holds embarrassing love letters he wrote to win her back, soft stuff he does not want read in court or around Trenton, and she set a game. Follow mailed clues. Get letters back in pieces. Find where she stashed some property she mentions in code.

Eddie offers Stephanie a thousand extra to let him talk to Maxine before she turns her over. Stephanie says yes. A thousand here is winter heat and a dent in the card. Staying near Eddie may also lead her to Maxine faster than cold knocks.

The clues hop around Trenton, then toward the shore. Stephanie asks neighbors and gets sent to a nephew good at puzzles. That nephew is Salvatore Sweet, called Sally.

Sally is an aspiring rock musician who broke through performing in drag and kept at it because he is good and the clothes are better, as he puts it. He has solved puzzles since childhood. He sees what Stephanie misses. Street names that double as directions. Numbers that match lockers. References to spots where Maxine and Eddie went when they were together.

They make an odd team. She drives badly and apologizes to traffic. He grades her outfits while decoding in the passenger seat. She fears getting shot. He fears humidity ruining his hair. It works because neither poses as a detective. Follow a clue. Find the next. Argue. Eat something fried. Try again.

Maxine keeps slipping past. Stephanie spots her twice in Trenton and loses her in foot traffic. Once by a diner. Once by a laundromat where dryers cover footsteps. Maxine taunts her by phone. She does not sound like a hardened criminal. She sounds tired and angry, like someone who planned revenge and found it lonely.

The weak spot is clear. Stephanie solves almost nothing without Sally. Without him she would still stare at note one. That reliance feels honest. Stephanie was never the paper person. She persists. She keeps showing up.

Mothers and fingers and a manager who talked

Here the violence stops being background noise.

Stephanie visits Maxine's mother. Mrs. Nowicki is scared deep in her shoulders. She says another man has been asking for Maxine, not politely. Later Stephanie learns Mrs. Nowicki was scalped, maimed as a warning. Evanovich skips gore and shows aftermath. Bandages. An uncleaned kitchen. A woman still answering doors because she sees no choice.

Margie, Maxine's friend, gets similar treatment. Someone takes one of her fingers to force Maxine out. Margie tries to joke when Stephanie visits, then cries. That scene stayed with me longer than any explosion. The humor here usually comes from Lula or Grandma. There is no joke to soften this.

A 7-Eleven manager who last saw Maxine turns up dead. Connie hears it through office talk. Morelli confirms it in flat cop voice that angers Stephanie. He wants her off the case. She hears him hiding facts.

The pattern is plain though motive is not. Someone besides Stephanie and Joyce hunts Maxine, and that someone does not care who gets hurt between. Stephanie starts carrying her gun with care. She checks her car before starting it, which given her history feels both sensible and sad.

Her Honda CRX dies in a way that made me groan. Sugar, the stalker I will cover, soaks it in gasoline. A cigarette butt dropped by Mrs. Nowicki, who smokes when stressed and misses the ashtray, lights it. Lula's Pontiac Firebird sits too close and burns with it. Two cars, one fire. Stephanie stands with Lula on the sidewalk doing that laugh that is really protest. The car gag repeats across books. Here it costs. Stephanie cannot replace one car, let alone help Lula. Eddie's thousand starts to look like survival, not bonus.

Criticism belongs here because the middle sags. Maxine escapes three times on perfect timing. An open door. A crowd parting wrong. A bus pulling off as Stephanie reaches the curb. After the second miss I skimmed parking lot prose. Evanovich writes good chases but leans on coincidence to keep Maxine free until the money plot is ready. Threats also pile without weight. Notes on the windshield. A brick. Vandalism on a borrowed car. Each scares her for a page, then Lula jokes and the scare fades. I wanted one quiet chapter where Stephanie admits fear of sleep, instead of jokes covering it. The firebomb should have marked her more.

Still, the interviews work. Sitting with Margie, asking about Eddie and money and trust, you learn how small Trenton is for women with few options. Shifts. Tips for gas. A boyfriend who brags drunk. A mother who says stay but cannot shield you. Maxine's run makes sense before you know about the plates.

Lula and Grandma Mazur and Sally Sweet

If that section felt heavy, this is the lift. Evanovich hands the book to her side cast for stretches, and it breathes again.

Lula files at the office and rides with Stephanie when she feels like it. Former sex worker, now set on bounty hunting, loud and dressed for a club at noon. She watches doorways over fried chicken. She walks into bars where Stephanie would get stared down. Near the end she fires through a window to distract two people about to kill Stephanie. Reckless. It saves a life.

Grandma Mazur invites herself along too often. She loves funerals and action. Nothing shocks her. She asks blunt questions that make witnesses talk just to end it. At Stiva's during the Kenny Martin sideline, she studies caskets while Ranger and Stephanie dodge Grizollis. Near Point Pleasant she brings sandwiches and weak binoculars. She has no filter on Morelli and Stephanie living together, which fuels a dinner scene where Stephanie wants to slide under the table while her mother refills bowls.

Sally earns his keep. He is not a dress joke. He is a working musician who learned drag for gigs and found community there. He knows clubs, back doors, who talks after a set. He decodes, then stays because he likes Stephanie and worries for Maxine in a way he explains late. His roommate and bandmate Sugar, real name Gregory Stern, taught him stage presentation. Sugar loves Sally in secret and reads time with Stephanie as a threat.

Sugar is the stalker. He leaves notes telling Stephanie to stay from his boyfriend. He vandalizes. He sets the fire that guts her apartment. When Stephanie and Morelli catch him at a club, the scene reads sad more than scary. Sugar is not a mastermind. He is jealous and convinced Sally will leave him for a straight woman who only asked puzzle help. Morelli arrests him gently. Sally is shaken. Stephanie, angry for chapters, ends up sorry for both.

I appreciated that Sally and Sugar are not punchlines. Lula jokes about wigs, but the bond between Sally and Stephanie gets respect. He risks gigs to ride with her. She defends him to a smirking cop. In a series that sometimes grabs easy stereotypes, these chapters show care.

Shore trips let the group bicker. Trenton to Point Pleasant with Lula navigating and Grandma rating houses. Atlantic City casinos where Stephanie feels underdressed and Lula underappreciated. A boardwalk chat where salt ruins Sally's hair and he solves a clue anyway. These scenes do not push the counterfeit plot. They keep the attacks on Mrs. Nowicki and Margie from sitting too heavy for a comedy mystery. Without Lula demanding stops or Grandma spotting church friends in a casino, the middle would darken past what the series handles well.

Counterfeit plates in a dry cleaner basement

The turn comes from a small bill. An Eddie friend says Eddie passed a counterfeit twenty. Too smooth. Color off. Pressed, Morelli admits he works with Treasury on a local counterfeiter. He hid it so Stephanie would not chase funny money with Joyce on the street. She is furious with reason. She trailed Maxine's paper for weeks without knowing paper was the point.

Eddie vanishes. Stephanie visits his Uncle Leo and Aunt Betty, who rent him half their duplex. They seem calm about a missing nephew. They answer little. They offer no drink, which in the Burg signals trouble. She leaves uneasy.

She returns to snoop while they are out. The basement smells of chemicals and damp. Behind detergent boxes and a rusted sink she finds a body in a garbage bag. It is the dry cleaner, Leo's partner in washing bills. Before she can act, Leo and Betty return. They catch her and mean to kill her. Lula, waiting in a borrowed car, fires through the window. Chaos. Stephanie runs and calls Morelli with shaking hands, misdialing once.

Police arrive as Eddie reappears. Maxine had kidnapped him and just freed him. Before release she tattooed him with insulting slogans. He is sore, humiliated, still fretting his letters, which sums up Eddie. Lula laughs till she cries. I did too, then felt bad, then laughed again.

At the station Morelli fills in history over bad coffee. Leo is a retired Detroit mob enforcer. Twenty years back he stole well made counterfeiting plates. He waited, moved to Trenton, paired with another ex mobster who owned a dry cleaner to wash cash. Eddie helped print and pass and bragged drunk to Maxine about being a big shot. Maxine had loved Eddie once. He cheated and hit rough patches she could not forgive. After bail for taking his car, she feigned making up, got him to show the plates, and stole them.

The coded notes were revenge with purpose. Maxine wanted Eddie squirming, but she also needed time. She demanded a million in real cash from Leo for the plates. Leo paid. He also hunted her, hurting her mother and Margie, killing his partner when the man wavered. None of that sat in the clues. Stephanie and Sally solved a lover's game while Leo played for keeps.

This reveal sharpens Maxine and strains belief at once. She stops being a flaky waitress. She planned, used Eddie's vanity, hid plates, moved between Trenton and the shore, fed him hope in doses. I respect that. Yet plates arrive late. Hints exist, the smooth twenty, Leo's calm, the empty cleaner, but first read jumps hard from love letters to Treasury case. Evanovich rushes Treasury logic to reach the airport. I wanted one adult scene where Morelli and Stephanie trade notes instead of him withholding and her pouting.

Airport taser and a ride on the Ducati

A tip sends Stephanie and Lula to the airport. Maxine plans to leave the country with her mother and Margie once the million lands. Joyce Barnhardt arrives first and cuffs Maxine, already gloating.

Stephanie and Lula feel they earned the collar. They tase Joyce and leave her slumped behind her wheel. Mrs. Nowicki and Margie stand by, but Stephanie has no power to hold them and no wish to. She lets them walk. Morelli later says it will likely stand. No proof of blackmail. Eddie is too shamed by the kidnapping and tattoos to press charges. Maxine may serve a short term for the car theft, then join her mother and Margie to use the million.

I felt torn there, which I mean as praise. Stephanie assaults a rival to steal credit. The book plays it as funny and fair because Joyce is cruel and Maxine draws sympathy. It remains dirty. Evanovich knows. Morelli lifts an eyebrow, then drops it because bigger justice landed, Leo and Betty held, a murder solved, plates found. If you need clean ethics, this series will grate. If you accept Stephanie between Burg loyalty and law, the airport move reads true.

Last pages go quiet. Morelli offers a celebratory ride on his Ducati. Stephanie has ridden behind, arms around him, helmet loose. Now she refuses the back seat forever. She demands to drive. He argues, yields, says she will owe him later with a look that makes her laugh. She wobbles. She does not crash. Neighbors watch them circle the block.

I kept that image past the million dollar talk. Not grand romance. Small control. A woman who loses cars and apartments asks to handle one vehicle for once. A man who spent the book trying to keep her inside hands over the bars. No one transforms. Joyce will return. Vinnie will short a fee. Grandma will find another viewing. But Stephanie drove without wrecking. In this series that counts as growth.

If you are new, start with One for the Money. You need Rex and Connie and Burg rules for this to land. If you liked the first three, read this for Sally and Lula and for Maxine, whose anger makes sense. Know the middle thins and coincidences stack. I skimmed one chase and missed little. The basement and airport payoff covered it.

FAQ

Is Four to Score the fourth Stephanie Plum book?

Yes. Published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press, it follows Three to Get Deadly and centers on waitress Maxine Nowicki.

Who is Sally Sweet and why does Stephanie need him?

Sally is a Trenton musician and puzzle solver who decodes Maxine's coded notes for Eddie, since Stephanie cannot crack them alone.

Does Stephanie capture Maxine at the airport?

Joyce cuffs Maxine first, then Stephanie and Lula tase Joyce and take the collar, while Maxine's mother and Margie walk free.