Stone Cold; A Jesse Stone Novel

New York: Berkley Books, 2004. Second printing [stated]. Mass market paperback. [14], 300, [6] pages. Double front cover. Slightly cocked. Small tear at bottom of back cover. Robert Brown Parker (September 17, 1932 – January 18, 2010) was an American writer of fiction, primarily of the mystery/detective genre. His most famous works were the 40 novels written about the fictional private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the mid-1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character was also produced. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and bestselling authors such as Robert Crais, Harlan Coben, and Dennis Lehane as not only influencing their own work but reviving and changing the detective genre. Parker wrote his first novel in 1971 while teaching at Northeastern University. He became a full professor in 1976, and turned to full-time writing in 1979 with five Spenser novels to his credit. Parker also wrote two other series based on an individual character: He wrote nine novels based on the fictional character Jesse Stone, a Los Angeles police officer who moves to a small New England town, and six novels based on the fictional character Sunny Randall, a female private investigator. Parker wrote four Westerns starring the duo Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch. In 2002 he received the Grand Master Award Edgar for his collective oeuvre. In 2008 he was awarded the Gumshoe Lifetime Achievement Award. Tony and Brianna Lincoln just moved into Paradise, but friendly they aren't. In fact, these urbane thrill killers are knocking off the neighbors one by one, and Jesse Stone is next. Derived from a Kirkus review: After waiting in Spenser’s long shadow for three cases, alcoholic small-town police chief Jesse Stone comes into his own big-time when he goes up against a husband-and-wife pair of serial killers. The genteel culprits use murder as foreplay. What’s compelling is Jesse’s patience and pain as he works from one corpse to the next in little Paradise, Mass. What can he learn from the fact that each victim’s been shot twice by two different .22’s or from descriptions of a red Saab that was spotted at two crime scenes? And once he’s satisfied himself as to the smiling perps’ identities, what can he do to bring them down? These would be tough questions even if Jesse weren’t already laboring under the weight of another case in which answers come faster than justice—the rape of Candace Pennington by three of her high-school classmates who threaten her with worse if she talks to anybody, and who’s saddled with a mother no daughter would talk to anyway—and the eternal wait for Jenn, his newscaster ex, to fall back into his arms in between the embraces he exchanges with a local realtor, a future murder victim, and one of the rapist’s attorneys. Jesse preens less than the better-known Spenser and earns his male posturing more completely through his appealing vulnerability. A star is born. Condition: Good.

Keywords: Jesse Stone, Murder, Tony Lincoln, Brianna Lincoln, Thrill Killers, Candace Pennington, Serial Killers, Murder, Rape, Realtor, Newscaster

ISBN: 042519874X

[Book #81664]

Price: $12.50

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