Janet Evanovich struck gold with Stephanie Plum's adventure series,
still going strong with ELEVEN ON TOP in the word processor.
Meanwhile, to give her eagerly awaiting fans an Evanovich fix, one
of the nation's bestselling fiction writers found time to create a
new heroine, Alexandra (Barney) Barnaby.

Evanovich shifts the action from Stephanie Plum's Trenton, New
Jersey, to Baltimore, where Barney, or Alex as she prefers to be
called, holds down a lackluster job at an insurance company. Alex's
background, however, lends her a need for adventure and
unconventional career choices. Thanks to her high school and
college summer job in her dad's garage, she knows her way around
the insides of an automobile, and she once dabbled in the racecar
circuit.

"Just because I know how to change a guy's oil, doesn't mean I want
to spend the rest of my life on my back, staring up his
undercarriage," Alex says. "Okay, so my dad owns a garage. And
okay, I have a natural aptitude for rebuilding carburetors. There
comes a time in a girl's life when she needs to trade in her
mechanic's overalls for a pair of Manolo Blahnik stilettos. Not
that I can afford a lot of Manolos, but it's a goal, right?"

Alex is blonde, perky, cute and responsible. Her baby brother,
Bill, or Wild Bill as he is known, is anything but
responsible. So when he calls her at 2:00 a.m. from Miami telling
her not to worry if he disappears for a while, and the call ends in
a woman's scream, she's worried. So worried that she's on the next
plane to Florida to track him down. When Wild Bill's apartment
proves to have been tossed and he turns up missing, along with an
expensive boat belonging to his boss, NASCAR driver Sam Hooker,
Alex reacts as she always has when her brother gets in trouble. She
jumps in to help him.

Evanovich's romance writing background surfaces in METRO GIRL, as
Alex teams with Sam Hooker to track down her wayward brother and
Hooker's missing yacht. Hot car and boat chases through South
Florida's steamy heat raise the emotional temperature of their
none-too-friendly partnership in a missing persons adventure that
turns into a treasure hunt for sunken gold and a potentially
dangerous warhead in Cuba's forbidden waters. Cuban exiled warlord
Salzar has designs on a return to power, and will stop at nothing
to gain it. Alex, Wild Bill and Sam Hooker stand directly in his
way.

We're treated to an array of kinky bad guys and quirky good guys as
only Evanovich can devise. There's Judey, Alex's former schoolmate,
and his miniature schnauzer Brian. Then there's Slick and Gimpy, a
couple of suspicious characters who run afoul of Alex and her newly
found girlfriends: three gun-toting, cigar-rolling Cuban
refugees.

METRO GIRL meets NASCAR GUY --- a tempting new series in store for
Janet Evanovich? Her readers will make it happen, or not --- it's
all in the hands of the marketplace. But if Evanovich were an
offering on the stock exchange, I'd advise a buy.