Death In Paradise

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The Paradise Men's Softball League has wrapped up another game, and Jesse Stone is lingering in the parking lot with his teammates, drinking beer, swapping stories of double plays and beautiful women in the late-summer twilight. But then a frightened voice calls out to him from the edge of a nearby lake. There, two men squat at the water's edge. In front of them, facedown, was something that used to be a girl. The local cops are baffled, the victim was shot then dumped and her own parents didn't even bother to report her missing. Jesse tries to investigate his hunch.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Death in Paradise, Chapter One One out. A left-handed hitter with an inside-out swing. The ball would slice away from him toward third. Jesse took a step to his right. The next pitch was inside and chest high and the batter yanked it down the first baseline, over the bag and into the right-field corner, had there been a corner, and lumbered into second base without a throw. "I saw you move into the hole," the batter said to Jesse. "Foiled again, Paulie." They played three nights a week under the lights on the west side of town beside a lake, wearing team tee shirts and hats. One umpire. No stealing. No spikes allowed. Officially it was the Paradise Men's Softball League, but Jesse often thought of it as the Boys of Evening. The next batter was right-handed and Jesse knew he pulled everything. He stayed in the hole. On a two-one count the right-handed hitter rammed the ball a step to Jesse's left. One step. Left foot first, right foot turned, glove on the ground. Soft hands. Don't grab at it. Let it come to you. It was all muscle memory. Exact movements, rehearsed since childhood, and deeply visceral, somatically choreographed by the movement of the ball. With the ball hit in front of him, Paulie tried to go to third. In a continuous sequence of motion, Jesse swiped him with his glove as he went by, then threw the runner out at first. "Never try to advance on a ball hit in front of you," Paulie said as they walked off the field. "I've heard that," Jesse said. His shoulder hurt, as it always did when he threw. And he knew, as he always knew, that the throw was not a big-league throw. Before he got hurt, the ball used to hum when he threw it, used to make a little snarly hiss as it went across the infield. After the game they drank beer in the parking lot. Jesse was careful with the beer. Hanging around in the late twilight after a ball game drinking club soda just didn't work. But booze was too easy for Jesse. It went down too gently, made him feel too integrated. Jesse felt that it wasn't seemly for the police chief to get publicly hammered. So he had learned in the last few years to approach it very carefully. The talk was of double plays, and games played long ago, and plays at the plate, and sex. Talk of sex and baseball was the best of all possible talk. Jesse sipped a little of the beer. Beer from an ice-filled cooler was the best way for beer to be. From the edge of the lake a voice said, "Jesse, get over here." The voice was scared. Carrying a can of Lite beer, Jesse walked to the lakeside. Two men were squatting on their heels at the edge of the water. In front of them, floating facedown, was something that used to be a girl. --From Death in Paradise by Robert B. Parker (c) October 2001, G.P. Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission. Excerpted from Death in Paradise by Robert B. Parker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

While his Spenser series may always define him as a writer, Parker again proves his range in this third entry of his Jesse Stone series. Stone, chief of police in the small New England town of Paradise, is relaxing after a softball game one evening when a murdered girl's body is found nearby. Jesse must first discover the identity of the dead girl and then determine why she was killed. As if searching for a killer isn't enough, Jesse must also balance his police work against personal relationships, especially his complicated relationship with his ex-wife. Stone is a deceptively complex character, one whose problems are both interesting and completely believable. Like his protagonist, Parker doesn't waste words, using them sparingly while still managing to create scenes so vivid that the reader feels like an intimate observer. Another strong effort in what is already an impressive series, this one is a lock for high circulation in public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/01.] Craig Shufelt, Lane P.L., Fairfield, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Melancholy shadows this third, beautifully wrought Jesse Stone mystery; rarely if ever has Parker's fiction conveyed with such solemn intensity the challenge of living a good life in a world of sin. Jesse, erstwhile drunk and now sheriff of small-town Paradise, Mass., tackles two criminal and two personal mysteries here: the murder of a teenage girl found shot dead in a local lake, and the chronic beating of a local wife by her husband; the conundrum of Jesse's attraction to alcohol, and the mess of his love life, shaped by his dependence upon his estranged wife but encompassing a highly sexed affair with a school principal. The search for the identity and the killer of the girl brings Jesse, as such investigations traditionally do, into the realm of high society the prime suspect is a bestselling writer but also to the mean streets of Boston, where the sheriff parries with Gino Fish and Vinnie Morris (outlaws borrowed from the Spenser series). Dogged police work, a hot-to-trot wife, child prostitutes, the solace of baseball, hard-guy banter these and more classic elements inform and bolster this immensely satisfying tale. As usual with Parker these days, though, the book's ultimate pleasure lies in the words, suffused with a tough compassion won only through years of living, presented in prose whose impeccability speaks of decades of careful writing. (Oct.) Forecast: This is Parker's third outstanding novel of the year, after Potshot and Gunman's Rhapsody. To promote it, he plans a vigorous author tour. Expect high interest and sales. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Parker here gives Jesse Stone his third case (after Night Passage and Trouble in Paradise), which involves the murder of a prodigal daughter and hardly any clues. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

If this thinly plotted and flatly written thriller were a debut novel from an unknown, rather than the work of one of the reigning heavyweights in the mystery genre, it might not even merit a review. But the author is Robert B. Parker, justifiably touted for his Spenser novels, and his name will draw a crowd. The first problem is with Spenser's new hero, seen previously in Night Passage (1997) and Trouble in Paradise (1998). Jesse Stone, former LAPD cop and current chief of police in Paradise, New England, is no Spenser. He doesn't seem to be any character at all. He plays softball; he's divorced; he engages in painfully obvious station-house one-liners. There isn't the feeling, as there is on every page of a Spenser novel, that you're with a fine intelligence about to make interesting observations. The second problem is the writing, which reads like high-school Hemingway: "It was a bright summer morning. Jesse was feeling good." The relentless rhythm of choppy sentences and short chapters adds up to nothing and is finally only annoying. And the plot--Jesse's softball game is cut short by the discovery of a dead young girl floating in a lake--is a sleepwalk, as Jesse moves through the requisite grilling of negligent parents, oversexed boyfriend, and friends hiding a secret. There's very little to recommend here, except to say that Parker's fans will be curious about it. Connie Fletcher

Kirkus Book Review

The regular evening game of the Paradise Men's Softball League is interrupted when the body of a young woman floats to the surface of the adjacent lake. Since no one can identify the shooting victim, and no one answering to her general description has been reported missing, Police Chief Jesse Stone (Trouble in Paradise, 1998, etc.) relies on routine inquiries and a telltale class ring to identify her as Elinor (Billie) Bishop, universally labeled the "town pump" by her fellow high-school students. Billie's reputation is so dire, in fact, that her own parents deny she's their daughter. The only link Jesse can find for Billie is to the shelter for runaways that Sister Mary John runs in Jamaica Plains. But that link leads in turn to Alan Garner, whose telephone Billie had given as a forwarding number when she left the shelter, and to Garner's boss Gino Fish, the well-connected gay Boston mobster Parker's major-league sleuth Spenser (Potshot, p. 209, etc.) has tangled with now and again. All Jesse has to do is follow the links-if he can tear himself away from the bottle, his ex-wife Jenn, his current love interest Lilly Summers, and the rest of Paradise's troubled citizens for long enough. Parker regulars will find the same extraordinary stillness-as if every scene were still another frozen tableau-that marks the more famous Spenser novels. What they won't find this time is enough action, detection, or real mystery to keep a self-respecting short story from starving to death. Author tour