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Summary
Summary
A major crime-fiction event from the creator of the Spenser novels.The author of two dozen Spenser novels as well as numerous other works of fiction, Robert B. Parker is no stranger to both critical and popular acclaim. With his hallmark spare prose, sharp wit, and taut action, Parker has created in the Spenser series a character considered the paragon of private eyes, the standard against which all contemporary detective novels are measured. In Night Passage, Parker sets the bar even higher, with the introduction of Jesse Stone, a hero cut from different cloth.After a busted marriage kicks his drinking problem into overdrive and the LAPD unceremoniously dumps him, the thirty-five-year-old Stone's future looks bleak. So he's shocked when a small Massachusetts town called Paradise recruits him as police chief. Jesse can't help but wonder if this job is a genuine chance to start over, the kind of offer he can't refuse.Once on board, Jesse doesn't have to look for trouble in Paradise: it comes to him. For what is on the surface a quiet New England community quickly proves to be a crucible of political and moral corruption'replete with triple homicide, tight Boston mob ties, flamboyantly errant spouses, maddened militiaman, even a psychopath-about-town who has fixed his violent sights on the new lawman. Against all this, Jesse stands utterly alone with no one to trust; even he and the woman he's seeing are like ships that pass in the night. He finds he must test his mettle and powers of command to emerge a local hero'or the deadest of dupes.Fresh and wry, meditative and action-packed, Night Passage is first-rate Parker. As the flagship volume in a new series featuring a complex and engaging sleuth, it is doubly cause for celebration.
Author Notes
Robert Brown Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 17, 1932. He received a B.A. from Colby College in 1954, served in the U.S. Army in Korea, and then returned to receive a M. A. in English literature from Boston University in 1957. He received a Ph.D. in English literature from Boston University in 1971.
Before becoming a full-time writer in 1979, he taught at Lowell State College, Bridgewater State College and Northwestern University.
In 1971, Parker published The Godwuff Manuscript, as homage to Raymond Chandler. The character he created, Spencer, became his own detective and was featured in more than 30 novels. His Spencer character has been featured in six TV movies and the television series Spencer: For Hire that starred Robert Urich and ran from 1985 to 1988.
He is also the author of the Jesse Stone series, which has been made into a series of television movies for CBS, and the Sunny Randall series. His novel Appaloosa (2005) was made into a 2008 movie directed by and starring Ed Harris. He has received numerous awards for his work including an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1977 for The Promised Land, Grand Master Edgar Award for his collective oeuvre in 2002, and the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. He died of a heart attack on January 18, 2010 at the age of 77.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Great series characters can wind up tyrannizing their creators, who often seek relief in secondary series heroes. But Professor Challenger didn't save Conan Doyle from Holmes, Tiger Mann never put the kibosh on Spillane's Mike Hammerand Jessie Stone, though a finely wrought protagonist, won't keep Parker's fans from clamoring for ever more Spenser stories. Parker writes of Stone, an alcoholic cop booted out of L.A. Homicide only to be offered a job as police chief of a small Massachusetts town, in the third person, and his plotting suffers from the resultant multiple viewpoints. With Parker playing nearly all his cards face-up, there's little mystery and no suspense as Jesse uncovers, then foils, a murderous conspiracy on the part of a town official and his white-power militia. Also, many of the supporting charactersthe official, his bully of a sidekick, a couple of mobsters and a burned-out teen whom Jesse befriendswill seem, though crisply carved, too familiar to Spenser devotees. And so will Jesse, for although alluringly moody and silent, he is, like Spenser, a tough man of honor who gets the job done. What's less predictable here are the complex, expertly shaded relationships, especially romantic, as Jesse flails and fails at loving both his ex-wife and his new girlfriend. The most powerful romance here, though, is between Parker and the written word. He has employed the third person before, most notably in Wilderness and the cop saga All Our Yesterdays. Still, his doing so is sufficiently rare that it is exceedingly satisfying to watch this prose master lay down his cool, clean lines from outside someone's skin. 125,000 first printing. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
After 24 Spenser titles (Small Vices, p. 90, etc.), Parker branches out with this tale of Jesse Stone, who's eased out of LAPD Homicide by his divorce-driven drinking, then hired by the sharp town fathers of Paradise, Mass., to replace Chief Tom Carson, who found out a little too much about Paradise. And there's lots to find out, because Board of Selectmen chair Hasty Hathaway--whose credentials also include heading Freedom's Horsemen, the local Aryan supremacist militia--is in bed with organized crime guys from Boston. Hasty's also in bed with Tammy Portugal (though you can hardly blame him: Mrs. Hasty is getting nasty with everybody in town but him); and when Tammy threatens to go public with their affair unless Hasty makes an honest woman of her, the stage is set for a no-holds-barred confrontation between Hasty, his crime connections (especially his fix-it man, body-builder Jo Jo Genest), his crooked cops, and Freedom's Horsemen (on one side) and taciturn loner Jesse (on the other). Longtime Spenser fans, who have been enjoying the clipped phone dialogue between Jesse and his ex, will be smacking their lips. But then, suddenly, everything's too easy. Jesse gets his drinking under control and makes key friends in Paradise. His force closes ranks behind him. The big-time mobsters get busy fighting among themselves. Jo Jo crumbles. Freedom's Horsemen implode. Don't even ask about Hasty. You can always rely on Parker for some great talk and great scenes. But you'll have to wait for later entries in this new series for a great story.
Booklist Review
Jesse Stone's career as an LAPD homicide detective is over, as is his marriage, thanks largely to booze. The good news is that Paradise, Massachusetts, needs a police chief. What Stone doesn't know is that city father Hasty Hathaway and acting chief Lou Burke are looking for a pushover to put in charge, and they figure a lush might do nicely. They pick the wrong lush. Stone drinks too much, but he doesn't push easily. Soon he has tangled with Paradise's leading thug, Jo Jo Genest, and is becoming curious about the local militia outfit, to which most of the town's leading citizens belong. The new chief's suspicions about the town intensify when he learns that his predecessor has been murdered in remote Wyoming. As Stone's first major case plays out, he balances still-considerable feelings for his ex-wife against the nascent affair he's having with a local lawyer. The new series by the creator of the hugely successful Spenser books has a great deal going for it: an empathetic, painfully flawed protagonist; an atmospheric small-town setting rife with corruption; and a whole new set of fascinating secondary characters. Parker is a true craftsman, and he's also extremely versatile, as he's proved in the past with his mainstream fiction and with his little-known classic, Wilderness (1979), and as he now proves again with this fine new series. (Reviewed July 1997)0399143041Wes Lukowsky
Library Journal Review
The creator of the famed Spenser novels introduces a new detective series. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.