Wednesday, February 08, 2006
 
Book Report: Sea Change by Robert B. Parker (2006)
I paid this book at Borders on the day it came out, but that will come as no surprise to those of you who know me or who have read this blog for the last couple of years. I have been a strident Parker partisan for about twenty years now (see also "Meeting Robert B. Parker").

This is the fifth Jesse Stone novel, and I don't mind telling you, I like this series least. Jesse Stone comes across as less hard-boiled and more simpering....although he's hard enough with the bad guys and bantery enough with his police force, his issues with his ex-wife and whatnot really take too much of the book. Any of the book is too much. Unfortunately, as the snippets of him with his therapist unfold in a linear arc beginning with the first book and only advance the character when taken over the course of the series and advance the character independently of the action within the book, which means they're ultimately superfluous.

Jesse Stone, within this book, has to deal with sleazy sex and murder among the yachting class. He and his force plod along, encountering old standards Captain Healy and Rita Fiore and making a new acquaintance with a no-nonsense cop in Florida who's now eligible for repeat encounters in any or all of Parker's series or perhaps a series of her own (since the whole Helen Hunt/Sunny Randall thing seems to have gone by the wayside).

Still, I enjoyed the book and read it almost in a single sitting. Parker's dialog-laden prose is not very dense, and he hits a lot of familiar tropes, so long time readers can almost skim.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:46 PM
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