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.
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