"STRANGER IN PARADISE" by Robert B. Parker (A)

A sure sign that this book will be a good read is in the subtitle, "A Jesse Stone Novel," which is highlighted on the front cover. This is one of the latest of some 50 novels by the prolific author, Robert B. Parker, and the sixth in the series starring Jesse Stone. Parker has branched out in three directions in the same literary genre by authoring novels first starring Spenser, a Boston PI, then Sunny Randall, a petite ex-cop and recent divorcee, and now Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise, a small town on the Atlantic coast not far from Boston.

One might have thought that Parker would have run out of ideas for Spenser, his long-running series about the Boston PI. However, he has surprised me with a recently published novel about that character as well. Where he finds the time and the inspiration to write all of these novels is a source of considerable curiosity for me.

While Spenser exists more or less on an even emotional keel, both Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone are flawed human beings who are unable to move beyond their former failed relationships. Like Randall, Stone is another character who is carrying a very large torch for his ex. In fact, Jesse and Sunny had a fling with each other in an earlier novel, but nothing seems to work out for these two in the romance department. Maybe Parker has it designed that way. Nothing so prosaic as home and hearth and toddlers in diapers for his dashing cops and PI's.

Happily, this latest Jesse Stone novel features the same breezy writing style and the same snappy dialogue as the earlier Parker novels. More happily still, everything really comes together here for all of the long running characters. Chief Stone and Officer Molly Crane settle into a delightful routine where each knows the other well enough to read between the lines. And both of them dissect fellow officer "Suitcase" Simpson, a sweet guy and a capable cop, but certainly a naive individual who seems to be falling into a secondary career of "servicing" the lonely rich women in Paradise. For him, the town truly lives up to its name.

This novel achieves a new, much higher, level of interest with the appearance of Wilson "Crow" Cromartie, a contract killer for hire who claims to be a full-blooded Apache Indian. Whether he is or not, "Crow" is a force of nature who makes women weak at the knees and men quiver with fear. Not so much with Jesse, who is nearly his equal, but Crow is the kind of person that Jesse definitely want to keep in his sight. Crow seems destined to have a series of novels about him as well, for his is a character of commanding interest much like that of Joe Pike in the Robert Crais novels.

Crow pays Jesse a courtesy call to tell him that he is in town on a job and he doesn't want to cross paths with Jesse if he can help it. The two warily eye each other as respectful adversaries. Crow was known to have led a heist near Paradise some ten years before where a big time crook living under an alias was killed and $10 million disappeared. Jesse is chagrined to find out that he can't file charges against Crow in the case since none of the survivors, all of them women, want to testify against him.

This time Crow is in town to search for Amber Francisco, a fourteen year old runaway daughter of a man from Florida. The plot thickens dramatically when the daughter is found to be involved with a gang banger and the father turns out to be the head of the illegal rackets in southern Florida. His later instructions to Crow will make life difficult for everyone.

Jesse has his other officers keep tabs on Crow, but in the meantime he is occupied with Miriam Fieldler, a Paradise Neck socialite who is trying to shut down an alternate school for disadvantaged kids at an estate next door to her own.

This is news, and Jesse's ex is hot on the case. After failing to become a movie star, Jenn also moved to Massachusetts to be near Jesse and try her hand at television, eventually ending up as a weather caster. Now she is trying to break into investigative reporting, and she thinks nothing of using Jesse for inside information. It's enough to send Jesse to his shrink to make heads or tails of his complex emotional situation.

As good as the office banter is at the police station, this novel achieves new heights with the clipped dialogue between Jesse and Crow. It is in their repeated verbal attempts to place the other on the chessboard of their respective career paths which makes this Parker novel as special as it is. 2008, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 293 pages.