  The equation of state and the critical behavior around the critical end point
are studied in the context of the Polyakov--Nambu--Jona--Lasinio model. We
prove that a convenient choice of the model parameters is crucial to get the
correct description of isentropic trajectories. The physical relevance of the
effects of the regularization procedure is insured by the agreement with
general thermodynamic requirements. The results are compared with simple
thermodynamic expectations and lattice data.
