Three to Get Deadly

Three to Get Deadly is a crime novel by the American writer Janet Evanovich, first published in 1997. It is the third book featuring the bounty hunter Stephanie Plum.

Stephanie Plum became a bounty hunter by chance and through family connections, and she works the streets of Trenton, New Jersey, where she grew up. Moses Bedemier, known to everyone as Uncle Mo, owns an ice-cream parlour and sweet shop in the neighbourhood and is connected to nearly every family in it; when he is stopped by an over-eager young officer for carrying a concealed weapon and then fails to appear in court, Stephanie is given the file. Her attempts to find him go slowly because the people who know Mo will not help her hand him over, and the standard answer she gets is that he would never do anything wrong. The title comes from the children's counting rhyme about one for the money, two for the show, and the book follows the search for a man the whole neighbourhood believes in.

Evanovich writes the series as comic crime fiction, with the bail bonds office, the Plum family and the Trenton neighbourhoods taking as much room as the investigation, and each book is named after a line of the same counting rhyme.