Oh, my God, they killed Rush Limbaugh.<\/p>\n
Well, maybe it’s not really supposed to be Rush, but a national radio\/media figure is strung up in Paradise, Mass, and that means Jesse Stone has to figure out who did it. It’s a decent enough crime fiction piece, but it’s padded out with the Stone\/Randall era Parker relationship musings.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, whereas the Susan Silverman\/Spenser stories have 30+ years of real novels to work through, where the relationship was often secondary and vividly lived in Spenser’s adventures, in the Stone series the Jesse\/Jenn Stone issues are actually co-hosts (and, apparently, the Sunny Randall\/Richie issues are special guest stars). Stone, his lovers, his shrink, his co-workers, and pretty much all of the eastern seaboard represented in this book spend an awful lot of time talking about not understanding what’s wrong with Stone and his “love” for his ex-wife.<\/p>\n
Which almost ruins a decent crime fiction story.<\/p>\n
You know, if it evolved as small portions of the books or if the crises were lived out instead of talked out, I wouldn’t mind so much. But these Stone novels really do amp up the worst portions of the Spenser novels. As though the fans were saying, “More psychobabble, less detection.”<\/p>\n
But I still buy all the latest Robert B. Parker books new.<\/p>\n