TROUBLE IN PARADISE, # 2 in Parker's Jesse Stone series, is a quietly seething thriller with explosives to boom. In this type of deep plot action, here's how one chapter should end and the next one begin:
Chapter ending:
>> When the police car was halfway across, the bridge began to ripple. The ripple turned into a heave. And, as the sound of the explosion came rolling into the real estate office, the bridge went up and the police car went with it, somersaulting slowly in among the pieces of the disintegrating bridge. One of its doors blew away and the hood tore off, and the car languidly turned over and planed onto the gray harbor and disappeared....<<
Next chapter beginning:
>> "Exploded?" Jesse said on the radio. "Twenty calls at least, "Molly said. "At least five people said there was a police car on the bridge when it went." <<
I'm thinking that the above quote would be all I'd need to read in a review, to decide to pick up this novel. As I read the above passage, arriving at it through a steady-speed-progress from the beginning of the book, my first question, after being impressed with the explosive clarity of Parker's syntax, was, "Did Jesse's two patrolmen survive that percussion and splash?"
Of course I won't tell you what happened before or after the bridge appeared to take a short flight toward heaven then slammed into hell.
Temperature-rising-subplots twined perfectly from Macklin's gang's preparatory machinations to Jesse's personal and professional life's percolation. Various relationship scenes provided entertaining psychological miasma for wading through balsamic sex-pot stews. Jenn was showing daily as a TV weather girl in Jesse's territory, working to keep him while dating openly on the side. Since that didn't keep her busy enough, she attacked Kay Hopkins, a well-heeled, town snob-lady who had caused Jesse grief. Kay's nose slipped from its upward slant as blood spewed from Jenn's landed fist. What does Jesse do with that?
What caused that cowgirl episode was a previous scene which was even more entertaining than Jenn's fist action which landed her in jail. In that earlier scene, Jesse deftly dealt with a group of town snobs (including the Hopkins) and their lawyer. The situation opened in Jesse's office, appearing to be featuring Jesse's tail caught between a lid and a pot. Fear not. Jesse turned the rip-tide with finesse wrought hot. Loved it!
As if those perks in a work of fiction weren't enough, TROUBLE IN PARADISE introduced a "Crow" bad guy, honor-coded-predator, who could be Hawk's dark twin.
This Jesse # 2 had all I could hope for in an engrossing escape read, with an ending firing on all cylinders in Parker's redemption repertoire. (For a true short account featuring redemption and transitions to paradise, see
This is Someone's Loved One: An Undertaker's View
)
(My review is up of # 1, NIGHT PASSAGE. I enjoy reading Parker's series in order, though I have skipped around at times. See my Spenser Listmania for sequences and blurbs.)
Getting ready to order DEATH IN PARADISE, # 3 Jesse Stone,
Linda Shelnutt
Trouble in Paradise
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