Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do (Jesse Stone Series #12)

by Michael Brandman, Robert B. Parker Narrated by James Naughton

Overview

The woman on the bed was barely out of her teens. She wasn't exactly beautiful, but she'd tried to make the most of her looks. And now, alone in a seedy beachfront motel, she was dead.

Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone doesn't know her name. Whoever she is, she didn't deserve to die. Jesse starts digging, only to find himself caught in the crosshairs of a bitter turf war between two ruthless pimps. And more blood will spill before it's over.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Ornery Jesse Stone again puts justice ahead of the law in Brandman’s assured third continuation of Parker’s series featuring the Massachusetts smalltown police chief (after 2012’s Fool Me Twice). Stone has two serious matters on his plate: endemic patient abuse at a nursing home and the stabbing murder of an unidentified prostitute at a motel. Donnie Jacobs is in the first stages of Alzheimer’s, but Stone is shocked to find him in fear of physical abuse and frequently sedated. Stone’s hackles are raised even higher when he learns that the owners of Golden Horizons Retirement Village have a track record of patient neglect and mistreatment, making him determined to bring them to book any way he can. Getting traction on the homicide requires the detective to reach out to unsavory underworld figures. This will be comfort food for Parker fans, but others may find it a tad bland. Agent: Helen Brann, Helen Brann Agency. (Sept.)

From the Publisher

Praise for Robert B. Parker

“Not for nothing is Parker regarded as the reigning champion of the American tough-guy detective novel, heavyweight division.”—Entertainment Weekly

For the Jesse Stone novels

“If Spencer is the invincible knight, the timeless hero of American detective fiction, then Jesse Stone is the flawed hero of the moment.”—The New York Times Book Review

And for Michael Brandman

“[Brandman] is just the writer to carry Jesse into the future. No one understands what makes Bob Parker’s Jesse Stone tick better than Michael Brandman.”—Tom Selleck, star of the Jesse Stone TV movies

"Part of a grand tradition..."—USA Today

“I would personally like to thank Robert B. Parker for creating an admirable character like Jesse Stone and Michael Brandman for continuing his adventures and helping to keep Parker’s memory very much alive.”—BookReporter.com

“Will help meet insatiable demand for all things Parker.”—Library Journal

“Brandman nails Parker’s compressionist prose.”—Booklist

"Brandman perfectly reproduces Parker’s style in [an] impressive continuation of his series featuring Jesse Stone."—Publishers Weekly
 

Library Journal

09/01/2013
Brandman's third Jesse Stone installment after Parker's death (after Robert B. Parker's Fool Me Twice) will help meet insatiable demand for all things Parker. Expect holds. [See Prepub Alert, 3/25/13.]

Kirkus Reviews

2013-08-15
Brandman's third installment of Parker's second-string franchise springs a pair of seriously malnourished cases on Paradise, Mass. The Jane Doe found in bungalow 12 of the Surf and Sand Motel was barely old enough to vote when someone stabbed her to death. Convinced that the victim was a prostitute, Paradise police chief Jesse Stone (Robert B. Parker's Fool Me Twice, 2012, etc.) asks mobster Gino Fish to work his connections in order to identify her. Gino sends Jesse to Boston madam Clarice Edgerson and her associate Thomas Walker. Although Jesse and Clarice are clearly playing opposite ends of the street, they develop a surprising mutual respect. Not so for Walker, who tells his competitor Fat Boy Nelly that he'd love to see Jesse dead. Nor is Walker the only one, for the sad shape in which Jesse's found his retired accountant, Donnie Jacobs, has pitted Jesse against the Golden Horizons Retirement Village, whose director, Dr. Benedict Morrow, is dealing with Donnie's dementia by drugging him insensate and tying him to his bed. Jesse mobilizes Paradise's fire, health and buildings departments against Golden Horizons, revealing hundreds of code violations and threatening to get the place condemned. Both Morrow and Philip Connell, the head of Amherst Properties, the cut-rate firm that recently purchased Golden Horizons, swear vengeance against Jesse. So who'll get a piece of the police chief first--the mobbed-up pimp or the nursing-home executive? After two rounds of wondering whether Brandman can ape his master's style and structure and learning that he basically can, it's uncanny to see him toss off a lazy, low-stakes, low-tension entry that's so similar to so many of Parker's own lesser efforts.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169092899
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/10/2013
Series:	Jesse Stone Series
Edition description:	Unabridged

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