Sea Change

Robert B. Parker

It is Race Week in Paradise, Massachusetts. That means for a month all the luxury yachts and sailors from up and down the coast gather in Paradise and party while the races are going on. Jesse Stone and his police force know that the month of Race Week is going to be busy with drunks, disorderlies, and other misdemeanors and minor felonies. But they don't expect the body of a woman to float up to the beach.

The woman had been in the water a few weeks. But she still had to have died fairly close to Paradise in order to surface here. Was it an accident? Suicide? Murder? Jesse doesn't have any missing persons in Paradise. When he starts checking up and down the coast no one who fits her description has been reported missing. Now Jesse is on a quest - to discover who the woman was and what happened to her.

Florence Horvath had been the 30-something daughter of the Plum family - a monied family running a chain of country gourmet food stores in Florida. The last her parents or twin sisters knew she had left Miami for Race Week at Paradise. They didn't know she had disappeared. But they now know she is dead. The Lady Jane, the yacht she had been on is a world unto itself. It's 50-ish wealthy owner runs parties from the time they sail from Ft. Lauderdale until his return. He likes his women, shares his women, they share him, and everything is filmed. Jesse knows Horvath is involved even if the people on the Lady Jane deny knowing her. Now Jesse has to dig through the twisted sexual layers until he discovers the truth.

Again, Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone novel is short. This time, though, it works. I don't think I would have liked the author to dig deeper into the twisted events that form the story. Even Jesse's side story of self discovery as he deals with his ex-wife is complete. The background of the story is sick and twisted. But the novel is written with a light touch without vivid description. The reader knows what happens but doesn't have to have the description of events of Sea Change shoved in the face.

Notice: Strong indecent language, Strong sexual content

Night Passage
Trouble in Paradise
Death in Paradise
Stone Cold
Sea Change
Blue Screen
High Profile
Stranger in Paradise
Night and Day
Split Image
Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues (by Michael Brandman)

A Savage Place by Robert B. Parker