Rating: 
Summary: A must read!
Review: I think this is definately one of the best books in Jesse Stone series. Jesse Stone encounters two very smart murderers who kill randomly and seemingly without a motive. I always liked Jesse's character but his confused ex-wife gets on my nerves. It seems to be a pattern in Robert Parker's books-in his Spencer series there is Susan who just can't work through her problems and have been confused about who she is for a long time. Same here. Its my only complaint about his books which are always excellent.
Rating:
Summary: A must read!
Review: I think this is definately one of the best books in Jesse Stone series. Jesse Stone encounters two very smart murderers who kill randomly and seemingly without a motive. I always liked Jesse's character but his confused ex-wife gets on my nerves. It seems to be a pattern in Robert Parker's books-in his Spencer series there is Susan who just can't work through her problems and have been confused about who she is for a long time. Same here. Its my only complaint about his books which are always excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: B+
Review: I was not huge Parker fan until I read his previous novel. LOVED IT! This one was not quite as good but it was interesting and it wasn't filled with too much boredom, but could be considered so at times. 4 stars.
Rating:
Summary: The magic is showing again.
Review: I've been a fan of Robert B. Parker for what seems like ages and have been sorely disappointed and verbally assailing in my reviews of some of his more recent offerings. The jazz, the juice, the stuff that makes RBP, well, RBP, seemed to be gone. Where was the drama, the thick plots, the wit? My feeling was RBP was waning into literary obscurity. So, now, STONE COLD comes along. Not a Spenser novel but a Jesse Stone novel. Well, whatever RBP did to inspire himself relative to creating this storyline, he needs to stay with it. STONE COLD returns RBP to his roots, that of vehement distaste for the "bad guys," love for the hero, and some good old fashioned retribution.For those unfamiliar with Jesse Stone, he is Spenser's career contemporary albeit his personal antithesis. Jesse is the police chief of Paradise (a community on Boston's North Shore), a functional alcholic, and milktoast in the hands of his ex-wife who is blatantly audacious and Jesse's personal nemesis. Suffice it to say that Jesse is quite human, at times, a little too much so. A man's body has appeared on the beach, two bullet holes in his heart. There is no evidence to speak of and the investigation runs short before it begins. Shortly thereafter, another victim turns up, this time in the parking lot of the Paradise Mall. She was shot twice in the chest as she unloaded her groceries. Jesse has a bad feeling confirmed when he receives the news that the bullets in both murders came from the same gun. A serial killer. In the meantime, in a parallel story, a local high school girl has been raped and has come to Jesse for help. What Jesse does here is pure Parker. This is what Parker's fans love. Jesse's incredibly dysfunctional relationship with Jenn, his ex-wife, continues. Still carrying the torch for everything Jenn, Jesse finds solace in many other women "friends." His syrupy need to get Jenn back is old and you really want to slap him around and say, Wake UP!" But, this character flaw makes him human and, at times, the underdog (read: loveable). Net, net...Parker is back in this one. He introduces the bad guys early and allows the reader to follow their plans as they play cat-and-mouse against Jesse. Consequently, the suspense in this book is evident at two levels, the murder case and whether or not Jesse is going to "make it" to the next day. The thing we love about Jesse is his compassion for the job and desire to see justice. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Liked this book very much,
Review: I've been a fan of this writer for a long time and usually enjoy all of his books. I think most people who read the work of Robert Parker will enjoy the stories as well. Give this one a shot you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Liked this book very much,
Review: I've been a fan of this writer for a long time and usually enjoy all of his books. I think most people who read the work of Robert Parker will enjoy the stories as well. Give this one a shot you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: The best Jessie Stone book by far!
Review: If, like me, you have been disappointed by the Jessie Stone series, this book will be a pleasant surprise. Up to this point, Jessie has been an underdeveloped character - his books have seem to have been back-burner material and second-rate effort by Parker.
This one is different - and it is not a Spenser clone (like Sunny Randall)! Stone is working on two crimes at the same time and Parker paces them well so that the first crime (a rape at a local high school) comes to a resolution just as the second crime (a set of serial murders) finally starts to get interesting. No giant car chases or dramatic speeches as this book winds down, but it is satisfying nonetheless.
The only complaint I have is Parker's insistence on having dysfunctional romantic relationships dominate Stone's personal life (we love each other but we just can't marry each other because that would stifle us, but we are faithful to one another just like we were married, blah, blah, blah...). This is just like he has done with Spenser, Sunny Randall and Phillip Marlowe. Geez, give it a rest!
Rating:
Summary: Jesse Stone. Finally!
Review: It's difficult to compare any novelist's hero to Spenser. Heroic. Larger than life. A summa cum laude John Wayne. Big. Funny. Occasionally (and regrettably less frequently now) introspective. Literate. Well read. Able to quote Chaucer and Yogi Berra in the same paragraph. So Jesse Stone would fail in that comparison, albeit coming from the same pen as Parker but without the moral compass, the clarity of right and wrong, the comfort in the ying and the yang of his lover Silverman. Juxtaposed against that Jesse, close to promiscuous, haunted by his relationship with Jenn, his ex-wife, and a borderline drunk. Here though, in "Stone Cold," he begins the ascent from his own pit, his rut in the emotional trail. He accepts the love of women. Molly, his faithful aide, loves him and yet tells him where the line in the sand is drawn. And he ponders that. And Marcy, (...), also shows him the line in the sand. And it is not inconsequential that one loves him and won't sleep with him and the other will, but won't love him. Darn good, Mr. Parker. His treatment of the teenage rape victim is extraordinary. The manner in which he solicits women's thoughts and fears from Marcy, Molly, and the ever present, ever carnal Rita Fiore, is casebook stuff from more than just Parker's whimsy. And his treatment of Candace, the rape victim, seems to me to be the stuff of true love and compassion, even up to the point where when she leaves, he let's her and her family disappear, not willing to intrude on their self sought exile. Dix his therapist, tells him that "there's a point where security and freedom begin to clash." And that's the story of Jenn, his ex-wife, whom he clings to, even though repeatedly she breaks his heart. Good stuff. He comes of age. 5 Stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Quick and light
Review: Jesse Stone is police chief of the small town of Paradise. Jesse has a drinking problem, which he says does not interfere with his job, but was enough to get him kicked of the LAPD. He also has romantic dependency problems with his ex-wife Jenn. One moment he is all machismo, often found in Parker's male protagonists, the next minute he's a sad sap mooning over a woman who would rather sleep with other men than stay in their marriage despite saying she still loves him. Not that Jesse has any problem getting other women to sleep with him. They don't even mind when he tells them he is in love with his ex-wife and that he would go back to her in a shot as soon as she crooks her little finger. In the midst of all this emotional turmoil, dead bodies pile up on Jesse's doorstep. It seems a serial killer is loose in Paradise. No problem, Jesse is on the case and in short order great strides in finding the culprits are made. Jesse has a little cat and mouse game going with the killers, but in the end they are no match for Jesse.There is also a subplot where Jesse rides to the rescue of a teenage gang-rape victim. This is a pretty quick read due to fairly large margins and a large font. The protagonist comes off as a bit of a superhero and the storyline is a bit too pat to be believable. This is not to say this was a bad book, it was just so unbelievable at times that I had to shake my head. It was a nice, easy, uncomplicated read. You just have to take it for what it is.
Rating:
Summary: Vintage Parker
Review: Jesse Stone is sort of Spenser's alter ego. He's younger, and Spenser's never had a drinking problem, but other than that, they're pretty much the same character, except Stone's about thirty years younger. Robert B. Parker has been writing detective novels for a very long time now: this is the fourth Stone novel, there are 31 Spenser novels, three featuring his third character, Sunny Randall, and nine books that aren't part of a series, some of them non-fiction. That's 47 books, for those who aren't keeping up with the math. Obviously, by now Parker knows what he's doing. He seems able to write one of these every six months or so: he alternates between Randall, Spenser, and Stone with ease, and just floats along.
In this outing, Stone's faced with a real problem. Paradise (the town he's Chief of Police in) has been hit by a rash of killings, and it's soon apparent that they're the work of a serial killer, or killers. Stone has no way of tracking the killer at first, and the killers seem able to strike with impunity and kill whoever they wish.
Meanwhile, there's also a scared girl at the local high school, the victim of a gang rape and some threats afterwards. Stone has to resolve things, and control the situation so that the girl doesn't get hurt.
And of course there's his personal life, which has been a problem for him since the series started with Night Passage. His ex-wife is a manipulative sociopath, interested in only herself and how she can control him, near as I can tell. In this installment, she attempts to manipulate him more than she should, and things take some interesting turns.
I enjoyed this book a great deal, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for some light reading.
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