Two for the Dough

Two for the Dough is a crime novel by the American writer Janet Evanovich, published in 1996. It is the second book featuring the bounty hunter Stephanie Plum.

Stephanie Plum works as a bounty hunter in Trenton, New Jersey, and she is still learning the job when her cousin Vinnie gives her an easy file: Kenny Mancuso, charged with shooting his best friend in the knee and then failing to appear. The friend he shot, Moogey Bues, is shot a second time while Stephanie is looking for Kenny around their old neighbourhood, and the second attack is fatal, which complicates the case against the man she is supposed to bring in. Joe Morelli, a vice cop and Kenny's cousin, is hunting Kenny as well. In the middle of all of it, Stephanie is approached by Spiro Stiva, whose stepfather owns a local funeral home, about twenty-four coffins that he bought cheaply and that have since disappeared, and she takes on that work too.

The Stephanie Plum books are written as comic crime novels, with a large cast of relatives and neighbours around the investigations, and they follow their heroine through Trenton rather than through a police department. Kenny Mancuso and Joe Morelli are cousins, which is why the same case is being worked from two directions at once, and like the others in the series this book sold well enough to spend a long stretch on the best-seller lists.