Interviews
I created Jesse Stone to see if I could -- the way, if you lift weights, you try a 300-pound bench press. He is a different kind of character than Spenser, and through him I can offer another point of view. This series is written in third person, not first person. I intentionally deprived myself of all the tricks that you can play with a first person narration.
I was quite careful not to make Jesse Stone Spenser by another name. Jesse Stone is about 35 and has had many setbacks in his life. He grew up in Arizona and California and started out as a minor-league ballplayer, a shortstop. When he hurt his arm and couldn't make the throw, that opportunity passed him by. Then he became a cop in the L.A. police department. He has a drinking problem, which he is controlling at the moment, but not perfectly. When his marriage broke up, Jesse got fired from the LAPD, not for insubordination but for drunkenness. Now he is alone in a strange new environment, having moved from California to Massachusetts to be the police chief of a small town called Paradise.
So Jesse Stone is employed as opposed to Spenser, who is self-employed; he is young whereas Spenser is more mature; he does not have a happy love relationship, although his ex-wife is around -- that's problematic. Also, Jesse is not the same kind of self-contained guy that Spenser is. Jesse is a much more damaged individual who is coming to terms with himself as he goes along, unlike Spenser, who may have changed over the years but is still the same person he was on the first page of The Godwulf Manuscript.
Robert B. Parker