Review by Booklist Review
Jimmy Macklin is fresh from three years in prison, and he has no intention of returning. He also has no intention of living the straight life. In prison, he heard of a small, extremely wealthy island community across the bay from Paradise, Massachusetts--just the place for the kind of elaborately planned score Jimmy loves. He thinks of himself as a great general, working out his battle plan, but he's not nearly as good as he thinks. His first mistake is to assume that a small town would have a typically ineffectual police chief. Jesse Stone is neither typical nor ineffectual. A drinking problem and a painful divorce brought Stone to Paradise from the LAPD, but now his ex-wife, Jenn, has followed him east. Personal troubles aside, he's faced with Macklin and a crew of criminal experts comprising a demolition expert, an experienced ocean captain (to drive the getaway boat), and a fearless, resourceful killer known as Crow. This is the second entry in Parker's new Jesse Stone series, following Night Passage [BKL Jl 97], and it builds significantly on the foundation laid in its predecessor. Stone's emotional vulnerability is more visible as he struggles to come to terms with his feelings for Jenn, but he never misses a beat as he battles Macklin and his crew to an exciting conclusion. Parker fans will also enjoy comparing the amoral, ruthless Crow to Spenser's sidekick, Hawk. This is typical Parker, which means it's an enthralling, one-sitting read--and it's guaranteed to generate great demand. --Wes Lukowsky
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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, howeveras when the ex assaults a woman trying to get Stone firedthat 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. BOMC main selection. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Parker brings back Jesse Stone, his popular new protagonist from Night Passage, in time to face a group of ex-cons intent on blowing up a bridge. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Parker's 30th novel brings back Jesse Stone, alcoholic police chief of Paradise, Mass. (Night Passage, 1997), 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 cracker electrician, an explosives expert, and a stone killer) and prepares for an all-day assault on Stiles Island. Meantime, a couple of telltale 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 raceas it were)put Jesse onto the gang with satisfyingly predictable results. All right, it's no Asphalt Jungle. But Parker writes so economicallyeven the women this time out have caught Jesse's tersenessthat he almost has you believing this old, old story is happening for the first time. (Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
