Book Reviews: Three to get Deadly & A Trail of Fire

Trenton, N.J., bounty hunter and former lingerie buyer Stephanie Plum becomes persona non grata when she tracks down a neighborhood saint who has failed to show up for his court appearance. While questioning admirers of the man nicknamed Uncle Mo, Stephanie is attacked and knocked out as she cases his candy store. She comes to next to the dead body of her attacker, who turns out to be a well-known drug dealer. Suddenly, she can't avoid stumbling across the bodies of dead drug dealers: one in a dumpster, one in a closet and four in the candy store basement. Stephanie suspects that mild-mannered Mo has become a vigilante and is cleaning up the streets in a one-man killing spree. But when she's repeatedly threatened by men wearing ski masks, she wonders if Mo has company and just might be in over his head. 

I enjoy reading this series, it's light and and easy to read. I like the adventures that Stephanie finds herself in. In this book it seems that everyone is shooting at her. In this book she seems to have a sidekick in the hooker, Lula- and she makes me laugh! Stephanie also finds herself again in a somewhat relationship with Joe Morelli- although neither of them seem to realize that they are in a relationship. Rex the hamster also makes it through another book unharmed (although he had a close call with almost being pumped full of drugs to teach Stephanie a lesson.)

This book contains 4 short stories that fit in with some of the minor characters in the Outlander series.
2 of the stores I had already read, but 2 were new to me.
1st was A Leaf on the Wind, this is the story of what really happened to Roger's parents Jerry and Dolly- it takes place during WWII and fills in some of the mysteries from the 7th book in the series Echo. If you haven't read Echo yet, then dont read the rest of this post and don't read this short story until you finish Echo.
Claire mentions in Echo that her 1st husband Frank had wrote her a letter about a pilot who just went missing on a very special mission.  Turns out this pilot happen to be Roger's father, and he disappears because he time travels back in time. Roger thinks his father never makes it back, but a surprise ending that you will want to read for yourself tells a different story. Of course I love everything DG writes, and this just ads to the list. The characters she writes about feel like old friends to me, even the minor ones.
2nd of the stores is The Space Between. 
This novella deals with Joan MacKenzie (Laoghaire MacKenzie’s daughter by an earlier marriage, and Jamie Fraser’s step-daughter) and with Michael Murray (son of Ian and Jenny Fraser Murray, elder brother to Young Ian Murray), in which Michael, a young and newly-widowed wine-merchant, takes on the responsibility of seeing Joan safely to the convent where she proposes to take up her vocation as a nun. 
The story was very Si-Fi- on a whole I would never pick a Si-Fi book. Now I know that DG's book do deal with the Si-Fi of time travel, but to me that's just the means to get the characters where they are going. It's such a small part of the whole story that I just don't think the Outlander series as a whole fits in the Si-Fi category.
But because this was a short story it was the main focus. Joan and Michael run into an old charter from one of the earlier books-who I always thought was dead, but in this story it explains how he lived. He kidnaps Joan thinking she is someone else who can time travel. He wants here to help him get to a different time, but of course because she can't Time travel she has no clue what he is talking about and how to help him. Michael sets out to rescue her- and I think he a wee crush on Joan the soon to be Nun.  This story still leaves a few unanswered questions, but makes me even more excited from the next books!