Stranger in Paradise by Robert B. Parker

I think I've read this one before...

Published in 2008 by Putnam
304 pages

I am a gigantic fan of Robert B. Parker. I've read all of the Spenser books, the Stone books and the Randall books. And I'm slowly "re-reading" the Spenser books as audiobooks.

It is not lightly that I give this book two stars.

Robert B. Parker 
(1932-2010)

The Stone novels were always different than the Spenser / Sunny Randall novels. Spenser and Sunny always have that buddy network to fall back on (especially Hawk and Spike, respectively) Jesse has always been alone, except for his on-again off-again ex-wife, who actually makes his sense of being alone even stronger.

That whole formula is thrown out. Instead, we have a combination of a re-make of Spenser's April Kyle and Paul Giacomin stories told under Jesse Stone this time around. This time around we now have Amber.

Rather than Spenser's Hawk (a mysterious, unstoppable African-American who operates on the wrong side of the law that the ladies find irresistible and shares witty racial banter with Spenser) we now have Stone's Crow (a mysterious, unstoppable Native American who operates on the wrong side of the law that the ladies find irresistible and shares witty racial banter with Stone). Hawk. Crow. C'mon!

Parker often recycles previous plots (how can he not - he's written so many books!) but this was just too much for me. The story is easy to read, interesting and enjoyable, but it has too many recycled features for my taste.

I rate this book 2 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Stranger in Paradise.

Reviewed on February 20, 2008.