NIGHT AND DAY
By Robert B. Parker
Putnam, $25.95, 289 pages
REVIEWED BY LARRY THORNBERRY
Robert B. Parker earned his reputation as a crime fiction Top Gun with the lively and thoroughly entertaining Spenser series that began in 1973 with “The Godwulf Manuscript.”
Mr. Parker has sold million of copies of his 37 Spenser novels, perhaps the most successful detective series ever. Readers are drawn back by Mr. Parker’s fast-moving and often-surprising stories presented in crisp, lean prose featuring plenty of witty dialogue. (A central difference between Spenser — no first name is ever given — and wise-cracking fictional detectives of the past is that Spenser is actually funny.)
Not satisfied to just keep writing Spenser novels, Mr. Parker created Jesse Stone, a former Los Angeles Police Department detective with a broken marriage and a drinking problem who comes east to start a new life as chief of a small, ocean-side suburb of Boston. The town is called Paradise, which readers quickly learn, it isn’t always.
“Night and Day” is the ninth in the Jesse Stone series that features the Spenser-esque, fast-moving writing style with another laconic, knight-errant hero, though one less fully formed than Spenser. (And yes, this is the series from which five successful television movies have been made, starring Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone.) In Paradise, Chief Stone fights crime as well as his drinking problem while trying to sort out his relationship with his ex-wife, Jenn, who he can’t seem to live with or without.
The Stone series, like the Spenser series, has an ensemble cast of characters who change and evolve. So for maximum enjoyment, it’s best to read them in order, beginning with 1997’s “Night Passage.” But “Night and Day” can be enjoyed on its own for the characters, for the humor, and for a tight story based around three related subplots.
“Night and Day” is not the best of Mr. Parker’s Chief Stone offerings, and some readers who start here may wonder what all the Parker fuss is about. There’s probably somewhat fewer laughs per page in this one than in previous numbers. And some readers say they weary a bit of the battle with the bottle and Chief Stone’s continued inability to either make up with his ex or let it go. But there’s enough in “Night and Day” of what makes Bob Parker Bob Parker to repay the few hours it takes to read the book. Those who’ve read the previous books in the series will enjoy seeing their favorites in action again.
In a candid interview moment a few years back, Mr. Parker said that when he was not occupied with work he was usually thinking about either sex or baseball. In “Night and Day” it’s not baseball but sex that has Paradise roiled.
First, there’s the mysterious business of the middle-aged, female junior high school principal who, before a school dance, obliged a dozen or so girl students to show her their underwear to see if it was “appropriate.” Probably not illegal, but an intrusion into the girls’ privacy, one that has the students’ parents understandably angry. Jesse thinks there ought to be some sort of punishment for this kind of behavior but gets no help from the prosecutor who says there’s no crime, and gets major interference, including threats of losing his job, from the principal’s high-powered lawyer husband.
Then there’s the group of active wife-swappers. Again, not illegal, but it causes some problems for the children of at least one of the swinging couples, which brings out the knight-errant in Jesse.
Finally, there’s the driven voyeur, who fancies himself “The Night Hawk” and who likes to write letters to Jesse about his activities and his obsessions. What this guy does is clearly illegal and holds out the possibility of becoming threatening to his victims if it isn’t stopped.
As Jesse, along with recurring characters Officers Molly Crane and Luther “Suitcase” Simpson, pursue the Night Hawk they begin to suspect the town’s recent sexual peccadilloes could be related. And they find they can be dangerous as well as sordid.
Successful crime novels are morality plays. The universe is put out of order by crime, usually but not always a murder, and it’s up to the protagonist to put things right again. “Night and Day” is no exception to this rule. In this one, Jesse Stone comes close, especially in dealing with the wife-swapping subplot, to being a bit of a nanny as well as a knight. But a knight-errant can’t be perfect. And Jesse Stone’s windmills are real enough.
• Larry Thornberry is a writer living in Tampa.
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