Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues (Jesse Stone Series #10)

by Michael Brandman

Overview

Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief Jesse Stone returns in a brilliant new addition to the New York Times-bestselling series.

Paradise, Massachusetts, is preparing for the summer tourist season when a string of car thefts disturbs what is usually a quiet time in town. In a sudden escalation of violence, the thefts become murder, and chief of police Jesse Stone finds himself facing one of the toughest cases of his career. Pressure from the town politicians only increases when another crime wave puts residents on edge. Jesse confronts a personal dilemma as well: a burgeoning relationship with a young PR executive, whose plans to turn Paradise into a summertime concert destination may have her running afoul of the law.

When a mysterious figure from Jesse's past arrives in town, memories of his last troubled days as a cop in L.A. threaten his ability to keep order in Paradise-especially when it appears that the stranger is out for revenge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780425250457
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/02/2012
Series:	Jesse Stone Series , #10
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring 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.

Michael Brandman, the award-winning producer of more than thirty motion pictures, collaborated with Robert B. Parker for years on movie projects, the Spenser TV movies, and the Jesse Stone series of TV movies starring Tom Selleck. Brandman co-wrote the screenplays for Stone Cold, No Remorse, and Innocents Lost, and supervised the screenplay adaptations of Night Passage, Death in Paradise, and Sea Change. He and Selleck were executive producers of the entire series.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“It's a doozy…Michael Brandman shows that the standard that Parker set is still there…it all moves at a very fast pace.”—Lincoln Journal Star “The mysteries are solved in Jesse's inimitable style, and he even has a little time for a new romantic interest…I love it! Killing the Blues will join the other favorites on my Robert B. Parker bookcase.”—Bookreporter.com

“[An] impressive continuation of [Parker’s] series…easy, banter-filled writing, balanced with the lead's apparently limitless compassion, informed by bitter experience.”—Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

It's a doozy…Michael Brandman shows that the standard that Parker set is still there…it all moves at a very fast pace.”—Lincoln Journal Star

“The mysteries are solved in Jesse's inimitable style, and he even has a little time for a new romantic interest…I love it! Killing the Blues will join the other favorites on my Robert B. Parker bookcase.”—Bookreporter.com

“[An] impressive continuation of [Parker’s] series…easy, banter-filled writing, balanced with the lead's apparently limitless compassion, informed by bitter experience.”—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Brandman, who collaborated with Robert B. Parker (1932–2010) on TV adaptations of his work, perfectly reproduces Parker's style in this impressive continuation of his series featuring Paradise, Mass., police chief Jesse Stone. A series of auto thefts is plaguing the small Massachusetts town just as the profitable summer tourist season is about to kick off. More alarmingly, Stone's former boss with the LAPD, Captain Cronjager, phones to warn him that a criminal Stone once roughed up "pretty good," Rollo Nurse, has been paroled from California's Lompoc prison due to budget cuts and may come gunning for him. The ending may tie up loose ends a little too neatly, and Stone is a bit slow off the mark with one of his professional challenges, but as with the originals, the pleasure lies more in the easy, banter-filled writing, balanced with the lead's apparently limitless compassion, informed by bitter experience, than in the plot itself. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

With summer just weeks away, Chief of Police Jesse Stone is pretty tense—and not just because Paradise, MA, is gearing up for the tourists. Stone finds himself dealing with car thefts, then murder, then someone who's come to town to remind him of his not-so-happy past as an L.A. cop. Fans mourning Parker's death will be happy to see that Brandman, who has written and produced numerous TV movies based on Parker's novels, has picked up where the best-selling author left off.

Library Journal

Now that summer's here, the advent of the tourist season brings the same old crime-based problems to idyllic Paradise, Mass., but now at the hands of a different author.

Has anything changed since the death last year of series creator Robert B. Parker? Not really. Police chief Jesse Stone still misses his girlfriend Sunny Randall (Split Image, 2010, etc.), off in Europe on a job. Dispatcher/receptionist Molly Crane still gives him a hard time over his requests for coffee and monosyllabic responses to her questions. When somebody starts stealing cars from the streets of Paradise, Jesse's take-charge reaction is still the same. He shows the same omni-sensitive side when 14-year-old Lisa Barry holds her school principal hostage at gunpoint to protest her bullying by the Lincoln Village girls, and the same reliable intuition when he hears that Rollo Nurse, whose skull he fractured while arresting him in L.A. years ago, is out of prison and may be looking for him. He's still catnip to women like Alexis Richardson, who got the job of organizing and publicizing summer events through her uncle, selectman Carter Hansen. He still wrestles with the bottle, shares confidences with his therapist and cleans up his town with his usual laconic aplomb. The only differences are his new rental place right on the bay; Mildred Memory, a cat who finds him equally irresistible; and the unconvincing voices that bid the worst of the bad guys to do the bad things he does.

Film and TV producer Brandman, who collaborated on several of Jesse's TV adaptations, obviously believes that no news is good news. Series fans will probably agree.

Kirkus Reviews