KILLING PAPARAZZI

When photographer Nina Zero, who accidentally killed a couple of guys and totaled one wing of LAX in Shooting Elvis (1996), is paroled after five years, the first thing she does is reinsert her earrings and nose stud. The second is marry Englishman Gabriel Burns, a freelance tabloid photographer, in exchange for $2,000 and a sexy weekend in Vegas. But then (oops) Burns is tortured and killed, and Nina, who swears she used to be a good girl when she was Mary Alice Baker, is soon terrorizing in the nicest possible way anyone who may have murdered her bridegroom to pull him off the big story involving a politician, a teenage heartthrob, four hookers, and a gal teaching a dog very naughty tricks. Her parole officer nears apoplexy, two homicide cops hassle her, two more associates of Burns die, and negatives substantiating the big story disappear. Nina responds by picking some locks, bashing some private eyes, and chasing down a Mercedes in a tanklike vintage Caddy. She sells a few pictures, shoots off a few toes, and decides who’s guilty. But (oops) she’s wrong, winds up in a locked car trunk, and has to dial 911 on her cell phone to makes matters come out right.

Can a heroine whose tire-iron yearns for kneecaps still seem vulnerable and cuddly? Sure. Eversz may have pinned Nina down in the noir part of LA and given her heart to her abusive daddy, but if she moved to Trenton, she and Stephanie Plum would be the two most adorably dangerous gals in town.