Robert B. Parker introduces readers to police chief Jesse Stone in the first novel in the beloved mystery series—a New York Times bestseller.
After a busted marriage kicks his drinking problem into overdrive and the LAPD unceremoniously dumps him, thirty-five-year-old Jesse Stone’s future looks bleak. So he’s shocked when a small Massachusetts town called Paradise recruits him as police chief. He can’t help wondering if this job is a genuine chance to start over, the kind of offer he can’t refuse.
Once on board, Jesse doesn’t have to look for trouble in Paradise: it comes to him. For what is on the surface a quiet New England community quickly proves to be a crucible of political and moral corruption—replete with triple homicide, tight Boston mob ties, flamboyantly errant spouses, maddened militiamen and a psychopath-about-town who has fixed his violent sights on the new lawman. Against all this, Jesse stands utterly alone, with no one to trust—even he and the woman he’s seeing are like ships passing in the night. He finds he must test his mettle and powers of command to emerge a local hero—or the deadest of dupes.
Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring Police Chief Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole–Everett Hitch westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010.
Date of Birth:
September 17, 1932
Date of Death:
January 18, 2010
Place of Birth:
Springfield, Massachusetts
Place of Death:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Education:
B.A. in English, Colby College, 1954; M.A., Ph. D. in English, Boston University, 1957, 1971
I created Jesse Stone to see if I could -- the way, if you lift weights, you try a 300-pound bench press. He is a different kind of character than Spenser, and through him I can offer another point of view. This series is written in third person, not first person. I intentionally deprived myself of all the tricks that you can play with a first person narration.
I was quite careful not to make Jesse Stone Spenser by another name. Jesse Stone is about 35 and has had many setbacks in his life. He grew up in Arizona and California and started out as a minor-league ballplayer, a shortstop. When he hurt his arm and couldn't make the throw, that opportunity passed him by. Then he became a cop in the L.A. police department. He has a drinking problem, which he is controlling at the moment, but not perfectly. When his marriage broke up, Jesse got fired from the LAPD, not for insubordination but for drunkenness. Now he is alone in a strange new environment, having moved from California to Massachusetts to be the police chief of a small town called Paradise.
So Jesse Stone is employed as opposed to Spenser, who is self-employed; he is young whereas Spenser is more mature; he does not have a happy love relationship, although his ex-wife is around -- that's problematic. Also, Jesse is not the same kind of self-contained guy that Spenser is. Jesse is a much more damaged individual who is coming to terms with himself as he goes along, unlike Spenser, who may have changed over the years but is still the same person he was on the first page of The Godwulf Manuscript.
Most careers are ones you can, or get, to retire from at a certain age. Not writing! Authors get wiser and actually become better writers with the age and experience of a life well lived, and most keep writing up until the bitter end. And sometimes they were so, so close to finishing up just […]
