Death in Paradise (Jesse Stone Series #3)

by Robert B. Parker

Overview

“[Parker's found] the pitch-perfect voice for a guy who is straining every muscle to cut down on the booze, hang on to his new job as police chief, and not get rattled by the body of a teenage girl”(The New York Times) in this bestselling mystery in the Jesse Stone series.

Robert B. Parker takes readers back in Paradise, where Detective Jesse Stone is looking for two things: the killer of a teenage girl—and someone, anyone, who is willing to claim the body...

The local cops haven't seen anything like this, but Jesse's L.A. past has made him all too familiar with floaters. This girl hadn't committed suicide; she hadn't been drowned: she'd been shot and dumped, discarded like trash. Before long it becomes clear that she had a taste for the wild life; and her own parents can't be bothered to report her missing, or even admit that she once was a child of theirs. All Jesse has to go on is a young man's school ring on a gold chain, and a hunch or two.

Filled with magnetic characters and the muscular writing that are Parker's trademarks, Death in Paradise is a storytelling masterpiece.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101546376
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/05/2002
Series:	Jesse Stone Series
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	417 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

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

Website:

http://robertbparker.net/

Read an Excerpt

Death in Paradise, Chapter One

One out. A left-handed hitter with an inside-out swing. The ball would slice away from him toward third. Jesse took a step to his right. The next pitch was inside and chest high and the batter yanked it down the first baseline, over the bag and into the right-field corner, had there been a corner, and lumbered into second base without a throw.

"I saw you move into the hole," the batter said to Jesse.

"Foiled again, Paulie."

They played three nights a week under the lights on the west side of town beside a lake, wearing team tee shirts and hats. One umpire. No stealing. No spikes allowed. Officially it was the Paradise Men's Softball League, but Jesse often thought of it as the Boys of Evening. The next batter was right-handed and Jesse knew he pulled everything. He stayed in the hole. On a two-one count the right-handed hitter rammed the ball a step to Jesse's left. One step. Left foot first, right foot turned, glove on the ground. Soft hands. Don't grab at it. Let it come to you. It was all muscle memory. Exact movements, rehearsed since childhood, and deeply visceral, somatically choreographed by the movement of the ball. With the ball hit in front of him, Paulie tried to go to third. In a continuous sequence of motion, Jesse swiped him with his glove as he went by, then threw the runner out at first.

"Never try to advance on a ball hit in front of you," Paulie said as they walked off the field.

"I've heard that," Jesse said.

His shoulder hurt, as it always did when he threw. And he knew, as he always knew, that the throw was not a big-league throw. Before he got hurt, the ball used to hum when he threw it, used to make a little snarly hiss as it went across the infield.

After the game they drank beer in the parking lot. Jesse was careful with the beer. Hanging around in the late twilight after a ball game drinking club soda just didn't work. But booze was too easy for Jesse. It went down too gently, made him feel too integrated. Jesse felt that it wasn't seemly for the police chief to get publicly hammered. So he had learned in the last few years to approach it very carefully.

The talk was of double plays, and games played long ago, and plays at the plate, and sex. Talk of sex and baseball was the best of all possible talk. Jesse sipped a little of the beer. Beer from an ice-filled cooler was the best way for beer to be. From the edge of the lake a voice said, "Jesse, get over here."

The voice was scared. Carrying a can of Lite beer, Jesse walked to the lakeside. Two men were squatting on their heels at the edge of the water. In front of them, floating facedown, was something that used to be a girl.

--From Death in Paradise by Robert B. Parker (c) October 2001, G.P. Putnam's Sons, a division of Penguin Putnam, used by permission.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Stone is a deceptively complex character, one whose problems are both interesting and completely believable…another strong effort in what is already an impressive series.” —Library Journal “Beautifully wrought...[an] immensely satisfying tale. Rarely if ever has Parker’s fiction conveyed with solemn intensity the challenge of living a good life in a world of sin. The book’s ultimate pleasure lies in the words, suffused with a tough compassion won only through years of living, presented in prose whose impeccability speaks of decades of careful writing.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“What’s so cool about Death in Paradise is watching Jesse Stone’s relentless pursuit of the bad guy.” —St. Petersburg Times
 
“Hard-hitting...and brutally frank...Parker reinvents, revises and reincarnates the hardball, tough-guy, deadpan mysteries of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Death in Paradise is a tough, clear-eyed, sardonic look at life and the raw deals it can dish out” —The Providence Sunday Journal
 
“If you love Parker, you’ll love this book. Jesse Stone is clearly in the Parker style” —Calgary Herald
 
“James Ellroy-style dialogue...Like Jesse Stone’s beer, Parker’s novels can be quaffed with relish.” —The Ottowa Citizen
 
“[Parker’s] gift for creating engaging characters and involving the reader in their fate makes this...well worth your attention.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune

 

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
It's often said that authors create protagonists that represent their own personality traits or characteristics in some form. If that's true, then Robert B. Parker's beloved Spenser probably mirrors the author's wit and unbridled machismo, while Jesse Stone is most certainly his sorrow.

Somber yet always inviting, Death in Paradise is the third in Parker's series featuring Stone, a former LAPD cop who was drummed out of California for drinking on the job and now serves as police chief of small-town Paradise, Massachusetts. This time Jesse not only continues his battle with alcoholism but must also solve the case of a murdered teenage girl found in a lake. The investigation leads Jesse deep into his own backyard, where the high-profile bestselling author Norman Shaw becomes a suspect -- as well as to Boston, where he must deal with mob figures Gino Fish and Vinnie Morris. Even off duty, Jesse has plenty of problems as he attempts to comb out his love life, from his consuming feelings for his ex-wife to his developing interest in the sexually charged principal of the dead girl's high school.

Parker emphasizes sentiment here as much as taut suspense and violence. He's always in excellent form, but he's never better than when dealing with small-town folk in all their complexity, as he delves into the secret lives hidden behind the Mr. and Mrs. Front Porch facade. This is the source of the poignancy and emotional resonance that will haul you into the story and refuse to let you go. We're drawn in, step by step, even when we know that something painful is looming around the next corner. With Death in Paradise, the bestselling author again proves that one of his greatest talents is his ability to fully realize the commonplace nature of remorse, loss, and passion. (Tom Piccirilli)

bn.com review

With all the authority of a bone-crunching fist, Robert B. Parker is back with another breezy detective novel that mystery fans will find as satisfying as a juicy prime rib at Peter Luger.

New York Post

A page-turner...one of the master's best.

Washington Post Book World

The regular evening game of the Paradise Men's Softball League is interrupted when the body of a young woman floats to the surface of the adjacent lake. Since no one can identify the shooting victim, and no one answering to her general description has been reported missing, Police Chief Jesse Stone (Trouble in Paradise, 1998, etc.) relies on routine inquiries and a telltale class ring to identify her as Elinor (Billie) Bishop, universally labeled the "town pump" by her fellow high-school students. Billie's reputation is so dire, in fact, that her own parents deny she's their daughter. The only link Jesse can find for Billie is to the shelter for runaways that Sister Mary John runs in Jamaica Plains. But that link leads in turn to Alan Garner, whose telephone Billie had given as a forwarding number when she left the shelter, and to Garner's boss Gino Fish, the well-connected gay Boston mobster Parker's major-league sleuth Spenser (Potshot, p. 209, etc.) has tangled with now and again. All Jesse has to do is follow the links-if he can tear himself away from the bottle, his ex-wife Jenn, his current love interest Lilly Summers, and the rest of Paradise's troubled citizens for long enough. Parker regulars will find the same extraordinary stillness-as if every scene were still another frozen tableau-that marks the more famous Spenser novels. What they won't find this time is enough action, detection, or real mystery to keep a self-respecting short story from starving to death.

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Death in Paradise

“Stone is a deceptively complex character, one whose problems are both interesting and completely believable…another strong effort in what is already an impressive series.”—Library Journal

“Beautifully wrought...[an] immensely satisfying tale. Rarely if ever has Parker’s fiction conveyed with solemn intensity the challenge of living a good life in a world of sin. The book’s ultimate pleasure lies in the words, suffused with a tough compassion won only through years of living, presented in prose whose impeccability speaks of decades of careful writing.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“What’s so cool about Death in Paradise is watching Jesse Stone’s relentless pursuit of the bad guy.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Hard-hitting...and brutally frank...Parker reinvents, revises and reincarnates the hardball, tough-guy, deadpan mysteries of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Death in Paradise is a tough, clear-eyed, sardonic look at life and the raw deals it can dish out.”—The Providence Sunday Journal

“If you love Parker, you’ll love this book. Jesse Stone is clearly in the Parker style.”—Calgary Herald

“James Ellroy-style dialogue...Like Jesse Stone’s beer, Parker’s novels can be quaffed with relish.”—The Ottowa Citizen

“[Parker’s] gift for creating engaging characters and involving the reader in their fate makes this...well worth your attention.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune

From the Publisher