Stone Cold

Robert B. Parker

2/17/2006

Jesse Stone is the chief of police of an affluent suburb north of Boston. The town of Paradise has the normal suburban crime. It also seems to have a serial killer in it. A man went running on the beach, then is found lying on the beach, shot in the heart. A woman goes grocery shopping at the mall. She is found behind her shopping cart, shot in the heart. More victims follow, all shot in the heart.

Jesse had worked homicide in Los Angeles before moving east to Paradise. He has more experience in police work than expected from a small town cop. He also has more emotional and personal baggage than the normal guy. His ex-wife followed him to the West Coast. He is an alcoholic. He gets involved with the victims who come to him. This time it is a high-school girl who has been gang raped by three of the "big whigs" at the local high school. What chance does she have in prosecuting the football star and his friends? How will she handle the embarrassment of something that wasn't her fault?

Now Jesse is trying to get justice for the girl and locate a serial killer - or is it killers?

The Jesse Stone novels are written in the Hemingway style - short and choppy. Robert B. Parker makes these novels pithy. It gets annoying sometimes. Yet it works. Jesse Stone is a complex man with good cop instincts. We know "who done it" about half way through the novel. But Jesse still has to prove it. This is a good, quick read. Stone Cold pulls in the detective genre reader and keeps him or her close until the book is done.

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Notice: Non-explicit sexual situations, innuendo, and language

Night Passage
Trouble in Paradise
Death in Paradise
Stone Cold
Sea Change
Blue Screen
High Profile
Stranger in Paradise