Some critics and fans have suggested that Jesse Stone, Chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, is a younger version of Robert B. Parker’s Boston private eye, Spenser. I’ve never agreed with that. Spenser was complete, except for the hiccup over Susan Silverman that had divided fans of that series.

Jesse Stone started out in Parker’s series as a guy in his early thirties who’d been knocked around by life and was a cop out in Los Angeles where he drank himself out of a badge. Tom Selleck plays Stone at a much older age in the series of made-for-TV movies. In a lot of ways, Stone is unfinished. He had a narrowly defined view of the world and few expectations of it.

During the series, Stone has emerged from some rather nasty things and marched slowly toward becoming more complete. He’s also had setbacks.

Overall, I enjoy the series every year when I sit down with a new book. However, Sea Change -- the fifth novel in the series -- has left me somewhat disenchanted.

I blame the subject matter more than I blame Parker. His writing was spot on for what he does. I enjoyed the opening chapter when Stone goes up against the drunken pro football player more than any of the rest of the book. That was a sad fact.

The book begins in an interesting fashion, with the murder of a woman who’s run down by a sailboat. Given that Paradise is a port city, the choice of weapons isn’t so astounding. There are lots of boats around. Particularly at this moment in time because the annual Yacht Race Week is in town (for a month, as it turns out, because the event has gone long past the original seven days it was first scheduled for).

Stone recovers the body from the water and quietly goes about his investigation. Most everyone assumes the death was accidental. But no one has come forward claiming someone is missing. Stone believes, and rightly so, that the woman was deliberately killed and whoever was there with her is in hiding or has fled the scene. The discovery of an abandoned rental boat bears this out.

From the beginning, the book delves into the sordid sexual side of Race Week and humans in general. I believe if Parker had lightened the tale up somewhat as he usually does, I would have enjoyed the book more. But I kept getting knotted up in the evil that men (and women) do. The novel turned out to be voyeuristic and appalling look at what powerful groups, misguided youth, and twisted families can provide in the way of sexual destruction.

Still, Parker writes books the way only Parker can. The dialogue is sharp and on target. His characters are real. And the mystery is definite, although the reader easily keeps pace in this one. However, it isn’t the whodunit that really draws the reader in as much as the why, but that may equally repulse the reader.

The bright spots were Stone’s relationship with Molly, the only female member of the Paradise Police Department and the Miami-Dade Police Department Detective Kelli Cruz. Both of these women were great and provided a lot of emotional resonance. I also enjoyed seeing Healy and Rita Fiore from the Spenser books.

The new Jesse Stone book, Stranger in Paradise, hits the shelves the first week of February. I’m looking forward to it.