Plugged is basically a beach book that you shouldn't take too seriously, or read if you and expecting anything more than some crude humor and decent action. There's no deep characterization or meaning to be found, but it does has some funny moments. Ultimately, though, these funny moments are fewer and less entertaining then Colfer's young adult works which leaves me hoping he gets back to what he does best.

One of my biggest problems with this book is the way Colfer would make a joke (which was usually a decent joke) but then instead of leaving that decent joke where it was, he would continuously reference it. The problem, of course, is that a joke that was barely worth including suddenly becomes tedious and annoying through excessive repetition. I found this same flaw in Colfer's other adult-oriented novel And Another Thing"¦. Just as a specific example, his joke about the word gobble being a combination of Hobbit and gobble was mentioned far too frequently.

Plugged is definitely at its best when Colfer allows the absurdity and ridiculousness of the story to be set free, such as the scene when he has just slept with the junior cop, and his psychotic/obsessed upstairs neighbor heads downstairs with a casserole.

A minor issue I had with the book was how inconsistent the town of Cloisters felt. Maybe it was my lack of attentiveness, but it seemed as though at one point Cloisters would be a quiet, small-town that had no crime or problems, and then the next minute it was full of mobsters, drugs, and prostitution. It seemed that Colfer would add a new feature to the town for whatever suited his point at that moment.

Though Plugged (the title is, of course, a pun on getting hair plugs and being shot/plugged) is by no means a bad book, I would recommend other works by Colfer far befor this book, including all the Artemis Fowl novels. Still, if you need a book for the beach, you'll probably find it funny enough to be worth reading.