Hardcore Twenty-Four

I was kind of disappointed by Janet Evanovich's latest Stephanie Plum, "Hardcore Twenty-Four". She slumped for a bit there, but the last few years have been pretty decent. Not as good as the first six or seven, of course, but still, better than they were. This one was meh. I mean, how many different ways can Stephanie destroy a high end luxury car that Ranger loans her? After awhile it's all the same. Diesel makes an appearance in this one, and I know he's one of Evanovich's supernatural characters from a different series (although I think he got his start on the Plum novellas she used to write--it's hard to remember at this point), and I'm not really a fan of mixing him in with books that are supposed to be somewhat realistic. It's just jarring and weird. At any rate, it looks like Trenton has been infested by zombies. They turn out to be regular folks who are under the influence of a potent new drug that makes them act like the undead. There's someone going around stealing heads off dead bodies in the morgue, which is gross, and Morelli is at his wit's end trying to figure out who would do such a thing. Stephanie's got her hands full taking care of a pet boa constrictor for a guy she had to take to jail, and she keeps running into the zombies in the woods by the guy's trailer. Definitely not one of her best.