Trouble in Paradise (Jesse Stone Series #2) by Robert B. Parker

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
September 1998

Trouble in Paradise is the best Parker in some time, not so much because of story (which is not exactly unfamiliar) but because of storytelling. Parker's into a different rhythm here — pitting his new hero, police chief Jesse Stone, against ex-con Jimmy Macklin, who is planning to invade a wealthy New England community, thereby endangering not only the fortunes of the people who live there but their lives as well.

While Stone still occasionally ruminates on his drinking problem and his crushing divorce, he is a lot more active here than in his debut, Night Passage. In fact, one might argue that this is more of a straight action novel told as only Parker could tell it, with sociological asides (some of his comments on the rich would undoubtedly please F. Scott Fitzgerald), sly glimpses of human monsters (the pecking order of bad guys), and the fascinating planning that goes into pulling off a caper of this magnitude.

The cinematic intercutting works beautifully and sets up the final confrontation with a nice inevitability. And since Parker is never without some second-act surprises, there are enough plot twists in the middle to keep you slapping those pages back. Parker's got the knack, and it seems he's never going to lose it.

The rich man's community is set up well, too. Although Parker doesn't seem crazy about rich folk in general, they are sketched honestly. He resists cheap shots and parody, which a number of recent bestsellers have indulged in too readily. Yes, there are a lot of nasty rich people, but I could name you a longlistof rather nasty poor people, too.

One has the sense that Parker needed Jesse Stone not so much for his career — which is running along quite nicely, thank you — but to keep himself from suffering series-itis. When you sit at the writing machine everyday, you get tired of using the same muscles. Although one may find similarities between Spenser and Stone, the series are sufficiently different to please both reader and Parker alike. I'd forgotten, for instance, how deft his third-person can be, especially in describing action. The opening of Wilderness, for example, is extraordinary in the simple way it sets up and foreshadows everything that will follow. One sees this again in his mainstream novel All Our Yesterdays, where he uses short chapters in the way silent-film directors used fade-ups and fade-downs.

Trouble in Paradise is one of those books that both men and women will like. Stone is a more believable character (for me) than Spenser, and the people he meets (good and bad) are more familiar to me than the typical cast of a Spenser novel. I think Parker's really on to something with these Stone books. These are damned exciting books, and Stone is a memorable and likable hero.

Oh, yes — and there's a character named Suitcase Simpson. Now how can you dislike a book with a guy named Suitcase?

——Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman's latest novels include Cold Blue Midnight, now available in paperback, Harlot's Moon and Black River Falls, the latter of which "proves Gorman's mastery of the pure suspense novel," says Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. ABC-TV has optioned the novel as a movie. He is also the editor of Mystery Scene Magazine, which Stephen King calls "indispensable" for mystery readers.

From the Publisher

Robert B. Parker and his legendary Spenser series have long been considered the ne plus ultra of detective fiction.  But the critics' praise for Jesse Stone's debut in Night Passage proved there was room for addition to the Parker literary canon.  "A novel as fresh as it is bold...Parker's sentences flow with as much wit, grace and assurance as ever, and Stone is a complex and consistently interesting new protagonist.  His speedy return will be welcome." (Newsday)

Stiles Island is a wealthy and exclusive enclave separated by a bridge from the Massachusetts coast town of Paradise.  James Macklin sees Stiles Island as the ultimate investment opportunity: all he needs to do is invade the island, blow the bridge, and loot the island.  To realize his investment, Macklin, along with his devoted girlfriend, Faye, assembles a crew of fellow ex-cons—all experts in their fields—including Wilson Cromartie, a fearsome Apache.  James Macklin is a bad man—a very bad man.  And Wilson Cromartie, known as Crow, is even worse.  

As Macklin plans his crime, Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone has his hands full.  He faces romantic entanglements in triplicate: his ex-wife, Jenn, is in the Paradise jail for assault, he's begun a new relationship with a Stiles Island realtor named Marcy Campbell, and he's still sorting out his feelings for attorney Abby Taylor.  When Macklin's attack on Stiles Island is set in motion, both Marcy and Abby are put in jeopardy.  As the casualties mount, it's up to Jesse to keep both women fromharm.  


A distinguished and talented actor, Richard Masur has been performing in movies and on television for over 20 years.  His many feature film credits include Multiplicity, Forget Paris, Six Degrees of Separation, My Girl and Risky Business.  He can be heard on the audio presentation of Robert Parker's Night Passage, also available from BDD Audio.

Entertainment Weekly

Not for nothing is Parker regarded as the reigning champion of the American tough-guy novel, heavyweight division. Over a 25-year career, the man has rarely composed a bad sentence or an inert paragraph. His 30th novel, which features brand-new protagonist Jesse Stone, proves no exception.

Publishers Weekly

Tough and tight, Parker's second Jesse Stone crime novel (after last year's Night Passage) finds the chief of police of modest Paradise, Mass., battling a ruthless gang of thieves even as he jousts with personal demons. Two parallel plotlines tell the story. One follows career criminal James Macklin and his moll, Faye, and their planning and subsequent execution of the heist of all the money and valuables on super-rich Stiles Island, which is connected by bridge to Paradise. Meanwhile, there's Stone, a cool customer who's not afraid to step on wealthy toes but who can't get his love life in order and can barely control his taste for booze.

The crime line is the stronger of the two, traced in prose as lean as any Parker has wrought, a grand little caper tale in its own right as Macklin collects a rogue's gallery of accomplices, isolates Stiles Island by dynamiting its bridge and harbor, then preys upon its inhabitants. Stone's romantic entanglements, particularly his troubled relationship with his ex-wife, add texture to the novel and are notably less sentimental than the amours of his Spenser stories. They manifest at times in a histrionic way, however -- as when the ex assaults a woman trying to get Stone fired -- that retards the surge of the crime story.

Stone remains a magnetic character, as silent as Spenser is chatty but equally strong, though likely too enigmatic at this juncture to engender the sort of reader affection that Spenser enjoys. Parker fans and all who love muscular crime writing will appreciate this tale, as the Boston-based crime master once again shows how to do it well, and with style.

Entertainment Weekly

Not for nothing is Parker regarded as the reigning champion of the American tough-guy novel, heavyweight division. Over a 25-year career, the man has rarely composed a bad sentence or an inert paragraph. His 30th novel, which features brand-new protagonist Jesse Stone, proves no exception.

Kirkus Reviews

Parker's 30th novel brings back Jesse Stone, alcoholic police chief of Paradise, Mass., whose customary round-robin of sorrows (the mother of a pair of anti-gay arsonist teenaged boys who's determined to break him for harassing her poor kids) and joys (the sometime return to Jesse's bed of his actress-ex, Jenn, now reading the weather forecast on Channel 3, and the welcome presence of several other ladies with clingy pants and short skirts), is interrupted by plans for a big score. The plans are made by Jimmy Macklin, a con who's got his eye on Stiles Island, Paradise's wealthiest and most easily isolated enclave.

Generously borrowing earlier capers, everywhere from Hammett's The Gutting of Couffignal to Sanders's The Anderson Tapes, Macklin, who seems more excited to be planning the score than to be counting the take, methodically gathers his troops (a crooked sailor, a crackerjack electrician, an explosives expert, and a killer) and prepares for an all-day assault on Stiles Island. Meantime, a couple of tell-tale clues (as in the amusing episode when Macklin, suitably disguised as a prospective buyer on Stiles Island, pays a visit to Jesse to check him out, and the two men compete in a race, as it were) put Jesse onto the gang with satisfyingly predictable results. All right, it's no Asphalt Jungle. But Parker writes so economically—even the women this time out have caught Jesse's terseness—that he almost has you believing this old, old story is happening for the first time.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Interviews & Essays
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Interviews & Essays

Q:  Who would you rather have covering your back, Spenser or Stone?

A:  I'd want Spenser. I've known him longer.

Q:  Do you feel that after two books Jesse Stone is a fully developed and established character? Are there any surprises around the corner?

A:  No, Jesse is still evolving. If there are surprises to come, they will be surprises to all of us, because when I start a novel I have no idea where I'm going. I don't have a master plan.

Q:  What was the last book you read and loved? What was the last movie you saw and loved?

A:  Last book I loved was Chandler's The Big Sleep; the last movie, "Shane."

Q:  What are the Red Sox's chances this year? Any chance of beating the Yankees if they meet?

A:  The Red Sox's chances are slim -- and slimmer if they meet the Yankees.

Q:  What would you consider the three most influential books in you life?

A:  The Great Gatsby, Go Down, Moses, and The Big Sleep.

Read a Sample Chapter

Chapter One

When he was sleepless, which was less often than it used to be, Jesse Stone would get into the black Explorer he'd driven from L.A. and cruise around Paradise, Massachusetts, where he was chief of police. Nights like tonight, with the rain slanting down through the dark, and the streets shiny in the headlights, were the ones Jesse liked best. It would have been nice, Jesse thought, on a night like this, to have been a town marshal somewhere in the old west, where he could have relaxed into the saddle under his oilskin slicker with his hat yanked down over his eyes and let the horse find its own direction. He drove slowly past the town common with its white colonial meetinghouse on which the rain had fallen for two hundred years. The blue glare of the mercury street lamps diffused by the rain was restrained and opalescent. Except for the headlights of the Explorer, there were no other lights in this part of town. The neat houses with large lawns around the common were still and unlit. Nothing moved. The town library was blank. The high school stood inert, its red brick glistening with rain, its black windows implacable in the arc of headlights as Jesse turned into the parking lot.

    He stopped the car for a moment and flicked on the high beams. The headlights rested on the baseball diamond: the rusting screen of the backstop, the slab of rubber on the pitcher's mound, bowed slightly, the hollow in front of it where the high school kids lunged off the rubber, trying to pitch off leg drive like Nolan Ryan. When he'd been in the minors, he could play the deepest short in the league because he hadthe big arm and could make the throw from the hole. Gave him range. Gave him more time. He could run. He had good hands. He could hit enough for a middle infielder. But it was the arm. Bigger arm than Rick Burleson, they used to tell him. Ticket to the show. Jesse rubbed his right shoulder as he looked at the baseball field. He remembered when he hurt it, at the start of a double play. It had been a clean take out. And it ended his career....

    Jesse let the car slide forward and turned and went down Main Street toward the water. He pulled off the street into the empty parking lot at Paradise Beach. He let the motor idle. The rain intensified the sea smell. In the headlights the surf came in and curled and crested and broke, the black ocean making the hard rain seem trivial. A thermos of piña coladas would be nice to drink sitting here, and maybe some music. He thought about Jenn. She had an infinite capacity for romance. If she were here, she would lean back with her eyes closed and talk with him and listen to him and let herself feel the romance of the late night and the rain and the sound of the ocean. And let him share it with her. Sometimes he thought he missed that more than anything else in the marriage. Ten years in L.A. Homicide hadn't extinguished his sense of romantic possibility. It had demonstrated beyond argument that romance was not at all likely. But in showing its evanescence, experience had made Jesse more certain that the possibility of romance was the final stay against confusion. Maybe for Jenn too. Long after the divorce, they were still connected. When she heard last year that he was in trouble, she'd come east. It wasn't the kind of trouble she could help with. She would have known that. She had come, simply, he supposed, when he allowed himself to think about it, to be there. And she was still here, living here. And what the hell were they going to do now? He put the car in drive and turned slowly out of the parking lot and drove along the beachfront toward downtown. Neither booze nor his ex-wife were good for him, and he shouldn't spend too much time thinking of them.

    The marquee of the movie theater was unlit. The stores were dark. The street lights cycled through the red, yellow, green changes unobserved. He went up Indian Hill and into Hawthorne Park. He parked very near the edge of the high ground and shut off the headlights and let the car idle again while he looked out over the harbor. To his left the harbor emptied into the open ocean. To his right the harbor dead-ended at the causeway that ran from Paradise to Paradise Neck. The neck was straight across the harbor, a low dark form with a lighthouse on the north point. Just inside the lighthouse point, a hundred yards off shore, crossing the T of the point at a slant, was Stiles Island. The near end of it shielded the harbor mouth, the far end jutted beyond the point into the open sea. In the channel, between the island and the neck, where the land pressed the water on either side, Jesse knew that the ocean currents seethed dangerously, and the water was never still. But from here, there was no hint of it. The calm sweep of the lighthouse just touched the expensive rooftops of the carefully spaced houses, and ran the full length of the barrel-arched bridge that connected it to the neck. The rest was darkness.

    Jesse sat for a long time in the darkness looking at the ocean and the rain. The digital clock on the dash read 4:23. In clear weather the eastern sky would be pale by now and in another half hour or so, this time of year, it would be light. Jesse turned on the headlights and backed the car up and headed back down the hill to shower and change and put on his badge.

Chapter Two

By the time was out of jail for a week, he had acquired a brown Mercedes sedan, which he stole from the Alewife Station parking garage, and a 9-mm semi-automatic pistol that he got from a guy he'd done time with named Desmond. Macklin used the nine to knock over a liquor store near Wellington Circle. With the money from the liquor store, he paid Desmond's cousin Chick, who worked at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, to fix up a registration in the name of Harry Smith and scam a legitimate license plate. He had the car painted British racing green. Then he bought a fifth of Belvedere vodka and a bottle of Stock vermouth and drove over to see Faye.

    As soon as he walked in the apartment, she slipped out of the bathrobe she was wearing and in five minutes they were making love. When it was over, Faye got up and made them each a martini and brought the drinks back to bed.

    "Saved that up for a year and a half," Macklin said.

    "I could tell," Faye said.

    They were propped among the pink and lavender pillows on Faye's king-sized bed with the martinis next to Macklin's pistol on the bedside table. The bedroom walls were lavender, and the ceiling was mirrored. The condominium was in the old Charlestown Navy Yard, and through the second floor windows they could see the Boston skyline across the harbor.

    "You too?" Macklin said.

    "Me too what?" Faye said.

    She had a rose tattooed at the top of her right thigh.

    "You been saving it for a year and a half?"

    "Of course," she said.

    Macklin drank some of his martini. The sheets on Faye's bed were lavender.

    "Nobody else?"

    "Nobody," Faye said.

    Staring up at the mirrored ceiling, she liked the way they looked. He was slim and smooth. He was so blond that his hair was nearly white. He looked a little pale now, but she knew he'd get his tan back. She loved the contrast of his white-blond hair and his tan skin. She examined herself carefully. Boobs still good. Legs still good. They ought to be. Forty-five minutes every day on the goddamned StairMaster. She rolled onto her side, and looked at her butt. Tight. StairMaster does it again.

    "Checking out the equipment?" Macklin said.

    "Uh-huh."

    "Seems to be working okay," Macklin said.

    She giggled.

    "How about yours?" she said.

    "Pretty soon."

    They finished their martinis in silence.

    "What are we going to do?" Faye said.

    "The same thing mostly," Macklin said, "but I was thinking maybe we could try it in the chair."

    Faye giggled again. "I don't mean that," she said. "I mean what are we going to do, you know, like with our life?"

    "Besides this?"

    "Besides this."

    Macklin smiled. He sat up higher in the bed and poured another martini for himself and one for Faye.

    "Well, tomorrow," Macklin said, "we're going up to Paradise and look at real estate on Stiles Island."

    "What's Stiles Island?"

    "Island in Paradise Harbor. It's connected to the rest of the town by a little bridge. Bridge is gated and there's a guard shack and a private security patrol. Everybody lives there is rich. They got a branch bank out there just for them."

    "How do you know about this place?"

    "Guy I was in jail with, Lester Lang, kept talking about it, called it the mother lode."

    "You ever seen it?"

    "Nope."

    "We going to buy property out there?" Faye said.

    "Nope."

    "So why we going up there to look at real estate?"

    "We're scoping the place."

    "For what?"

    "For the mother of all stickups," Macklin said.

    Faye put her head against his shoulder and laughed. "I'll drink to that," she said, touching the rim of her glass to the rim of his.