Tangled Web UK Review October 2008
Stranger in Paradise by
Robert B. Parker
hbk out May 08
Published by Quercus
at £16.99
I once wrote of Robert B Parker’s Spenser stories that I wished I could have such hilarious one-liners and put-downs at the tip of my tongue as his PI does. And all at just the right moment, too. Spenser’s been wise-cracking effortlessly for more than thirty-five years now. In 1997, Parker gave us another character to follow called Jesse Stone. Jesse is an ex-LA cop with a drinks and marriage problem who has taken a job as police chief in the unlikely named small town of Paradise, Massachusetts. This is the seventh story in the series.
When his best police officer Molly Crane says Wilson Cromartie wishes to speak to him, Jesse Stone gets worried. The last time he saw Crow, as Cromartie likes to be known, the man was involved in a robbery on Stiles Island (told in an earlier book called Trouble in Paradise)that went seriously wrong. Crow was last seen running away with a lot of money. The fact that he once again has business in town means that something bad is likely to happen. But meanwhile, Jesse has other concerns. Some of the respectable white middle-class residents of town express concern to him about a project to use a house in the nice part of town for educating Latinos from Marshport. Jesse deals with them coolly, and as a result of his policing of this issue, he encounters his ex-wife Jenn. She is now a reporter for Channel Three. Jesse still thinks he can get together with her again, but his shrink tells him straight how far away from that he is.
Crow is actually in town looking for the wife and daughter of a very unpleasant gangster in South Florida. When he finds them the husband tells him to kill the wife and bring the daughter back. The problem is Crow doesn’t kill women. He prefers making love to them - even Molly Crane, happily married with kids falls under his spell. His search for the daughter leads Crow to some young punks, and all hell starts to break loose. It’s down to Jesse to sort it all out.
Parker has struck pay-dirt again with Jesse Stone. He is no Spenser, rather he is the captain of cool – cool-headedness that has him sorting right from wrong and meting out justice in his own sensible way. Parker’s laconic style, with a tale largely told in dialogue form, still provides the reader with deep insights into his characters. And plenty of depth to the storyline. Don’t confuse sparse prose with lack of detail. Parker, the uncrowned Dean of American crime fiction, has had a long time to hone his skills. And he has not lost any pace in the process. Get ready for his usual roller-coaster ride.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
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