Classic Parker for Jesse Stone. Good read, but better if you start with first book in Jesse Stone stories and follow chronologically. This book is #9 in the series and will be a better read if the earlier novels are read first.
You can just picture Tom Selleck in this role of Jesse Stone and it makes the book go so fast, Parker's characters are quick and concise and the stories are the same, he doesn't waste time on pages of description not necessary and makes it easy to read a book in a day's time.
I've read everything Parker wrote up to and including this book. He used to be one of my favorite light reads, and I was sorry to hear he had passed away.
The last few of his books haven't been up to his earlier high standard, and this one is a case in point; I found myself rather bored by the time I was half way through it. While he was once the master of snappy dialogue, there needs to be a little something besides snappy dialogue to support the story. His latest work seems to have become just commentary on people's sex habits and their therapy experiences. There were, of course, a couple murders but I got the feeling he just threw them in so people would think it was good old cops and robbers - this was more cops and their shrinks than cops and robbers - makes you wonder if Parker was seeing a therapist at the end of his life.
His protagonist, Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise MA, who has had a drinking problem as long as we've known him, spends most of his time worrying about whether or not he's a real alcoholic. Jesse's squeeze of the moment, Sunny Randall, who had a series of Parker books with her as protagonist and fellow therapy seeker, makes the pronouncement that while Jesse drinks too much once in a while, he's certainly no alcoholic - and he's all too willing to buy into that diagnosis.
Speaking as an alcoholic who hasn't had a drink in over forty years, let me say this about that: non-alcoholics don't waste a lot of time worrying about whether they're alcoholic or not. Alcoholism is the only disease I know of that does its best to convince you that you don't have it. The fellowship I belong to says we can't identify anyone but ourselves as alcoholic, but if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, chances are pretty good it's a duck. Jesse Stone's been quacking for a long time...
