Stranger in Paradise (Jesse Stone Novels)
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Stranger in Paradise (Jesse Stone Novels) Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Same old, same old
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Are you familiar with the copious works of Robert B. Parker? If so, you have already read this novel, perhaps more than once, with slightly different characters uttering precisely the same terse, snappy dialog and with a nearly identical plot.
Spenser is now Jesse Stone, formerly a minor league baseball player rather than a second string boxer, who loves Scotch whiskey the way Spenser loved donuts, and who is now a small town police chief instead of a private eye. But he thinks, acts, and talks just like the same old Spenser we have known so well for so very long.
Hawk is no longer a black man. He is now an Apache Indian (named Crow as a not-too-subtle hint) who thinks, acts and talks just like the same familiar Hawk. Susan's transformation is a bit more complex, as Parker has split her persona into two characters: the insightful Dr Dix, a male shrink, and the glamorous TV journalist, Jenn. They never meet, of course, but together they offer up the same impeccable foil for Jesse Stone as Susan did for Spenser.
Drop these familiar characters into the venerable Spenser plot machine, hire a contract editor to turn the crank, and out pops Stranger in Paradise. All 72 brief chapters in less than 300 pages, double spaced, much of it blank white paper, and thus custom tailored for network television. Were it published in the NY Times Sunday Magazine, this entire book would run to about thirty pages. With ads. If you pack it along on a flight from Boston to LA, therefore, be warned that it will only sustain you until somewhere over Cleveland. Toss in Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (pseud) and then, while crossing the Great Plains and Rockies, relish the contrast.
Why, then, do I give it two stars? Because this book is a masterpiece of fluff, so utterly perfect in form that you would not want to change a single word, and it kept me reading right through to the end. Yes, the plot is somewhat less believable than X-men. Sure, the characters are thin vertical lines when viewed from the side. Truly the spare, laconic style could never be mistaken for anyone except Robert B. Parker. That the whole exceeds the paltry sum of these parts is why they call him The Master. |
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Stranger in Paradise (Jesse Stone Novels) Books In Print, Audio Books.