Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsStone Mediocre
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 6, 2013
Late in his career, when he was writing three books a year and juggling four series of protagonists, Robert B. Parker said he never wrote more than a first draft of his novels, did not read the finished product, and shipped them off to the publisher after a bit of tweaking by his wife Joan. It showed, for as he became the equivalent of a cottage industry, Spenser became less consistently good. Of course, when you repeat characters contantly, you are bound to repeat scenarios and events. And Parker seemed tired of the creative process at the end.
The beginnings of the Jesse Stone series showed promise, but in Stone Cold, it seems Parker was just as anxious to move on to the next book as I was to finish it. I flipped through it in one sitting, for there's not much meat on its bones.
Jesse tracks two crimes. A husband-wife duo, joyful serial killers, are the main evildoers. Secondarily is a case of gang rape involving a teenaged girl. Parker dealt much more skillfully with serial murder in the Spenser classic, Crimson Joy. Never strong on plotting, Parker's charachters all seem here to have the same verbal technique. Lines uttered by the killers could be spoken by Jesse Stone. Cliches mount as the pages turn.
Uninterested in creating new characters, a couple of Spenser staples take a detour into these pages. And continuing a trend that started a couple of decades ago in hard-boiled stories, the protagonist is personally a jellyfish. He just has to get in touch with his inner feelings. Stone has a tangled love life, still hasn't overcome his love of the bottle, and is suffering from bouts of depression. What he sees in his ex-wife, an empty-headed bimbo, is beyond me. And of course he makes a beeline for his psychiatrist several times. What's a good Police Chief without one.
This is a middling crime novel.Which raises a thought. Can you imagine Sam Spade, after turning his beloved over to the cops for the murder of his partner, Miles Archer, jumping onto a couch, hand over his eyes, and moaning, "Doc, I've got a problem".
Nah.
