AS ALWAYS, WHEN I READ A ROBERT PARKER BOOK, I KNOW IT WILL BE GOOD. BUT HE HAS OUT DONE HIMSELF WITH THE JESSE STONE SERIES. I FEEL LIKE I AM RIGHT THERE WITH JESSE STONE. CAN'T WAIT TO READ THE NEXT ONE. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK MR. PARKER

I was super excited to read this book but ended up dissapointed. I couldn't get passed the "Jesse said and Crow said and Molly said after EVERY sentence. Incredibly redundant, which makes it difficult to follow.

A Native American 'outside the mainstream' sidekick named Crow? Come on.What a ripoff of Hawk. What's next, an Inuit 'outside the mainstream' sidekick named Penguin?
Mysteries tend to include colorful characters that live outside conventional boundaries but gain our interest and sympathy, but the Jesse Stone series is just getting sleazy. We have Jesse's continued interest in Jenn, who sleeps around. Married police officer Molly slept with Crow, but is assured by Jenn that there is nothing wrong with that as 'nobody got hurt.' What if her husband found out? A central character, Amber is a teenaged psychopath who gleefully observes the killing of her mother, runs around with gangbangers and murderers, insults anyone who tries to help her and has a mouth like a sewer. She winds up with offers of foster parenthood by caring strangers and a trust fund, despite showing no gratitude for any of it. Gee, instead of going to college I should have set up a murder or two. Maybe I would have been funded for my efforts. Also sleeping around is another of Jesse's officers, who is dallying with a married woman involved in one of Jesse's cases.
The woman is a wealthy resident of Paradise who is protesting the establishment in her neighborhood of a school for Latino children from a neighboring town. Parker uses the controversy to hammer away that wealthy suburbanites are bad and support of liberal causes is good no matter how they are carried out. I support inclusion and education, but I would worry if someone decided to open a school for children from out of town in my neighborhood when this school required town resources to operate safely. Some logic is always nice, even in fiction.

All of Parker's detective novels, regardless of which main character they involve, are exercises in a combination of machismo, smart talk and psychological mumbo-jumbo. Even so, nearly all are tightly plotted, have interesting characters, and tie up all loose ends well enough.

Stranger in Paradise does not meet even that standard. It's disjointed, more than usually shallow, and reads like a mediocre TV script. Other than making a few really superficial political statements, the plot elements seem to serve no purpose other than demonstrating what a really good guy Jesse Stone is and justifying the main characters' extramarital sex lives. I can easily picture Parker sitting down and dashing this story off in the space of a few days and never revisiting it.

The plot involves the rescue of a 14-year old girl from her father and other assorted individuals who wish to use her. It's accompanied by a secondary plot regarding the opening of a Hispanic school in a posh neighborhood, and the snooty neighbors who oppose it. The fact that the 14-year old girl apparently assists in arranging several murder attempts seems not to be a matter of concern, or even overt mention.

The dialogue in most of Parker's books is peppy and clever, even if his main characters do have what amounts to the same conversation over and over again. In this book the characters all talk like Harvard professors, even the Hispanic gang leader. It's jarring.

In summary, while this one was mildly entertaining, it's definitely not up to Parker's usual standard.

I first learned of the Jesse Stone series from TV. Having somehow grown bored with Spenser, Hawk and Boston years earlier, a setting in Maine appealed to my taste for the unfamiliar. So I locked onto _Stranger in Paradise_ with relish. I have high praise for the novel, particularly since the story is fast-paced. At the conclusion I realized the appeal the book's 73 (!) chapters held for me: the chapters were like monkey bars, both easy to get started -- because the reader is drawn in -- and non-linear in the sense the plot does go back and forth from scene to scene. You have to pay attention. Certainly, the TV series presented me with visualizations I may have otherwise lacked, and that added to my enjoyment.
All in all, Mr. Parker, a memorable character and a fine read.