As far as I remember, this is the first of the many Robert B. Parker novels I read which left me somewhat disappointed.

While it was nice to see Sunny Randall, Parker’s female version of Spenser, meet Paradise, Mass., chief of police Jesse Stone for the first time, the dialogue-driven plot is pretty unrealistic. The investigations of movie-related murders in Los Angeles and Boston just drag along.

If you are a Parker completist (like me), get a used paperback copy. You’ll be done with the thin book in a few hours. ( )

While I have enjoyed Parker's books, this one was disappointing. It's as if the author stopped caring and stopped trying. The plot is thin and reuses some episodes from his earlier books. The text reads like the draft of a screenplay -- it's mainly dialogue, with little action and less description. What's more, since the dialogue is seldom even attributed to people (no "he said" and "she said") it's easy to lose track of who is saying what -- especially when a conversation involves more than two people. The issue comes to a head at a key point in the novel, when you have to read 2 or 3 times to figure who is being accused of the crime.

Every so often, the author tries to give his female protagonist some reality by referring to an unusual choice of clothing or other "girl stuff" (references to "shaving her legs" recur). What this does is remind the reader that this is a middle aged man trying to write from a woman's standpoint.

The book has a some moments of humor and even excitement, and the dialogue is at times clever. Unfortunately, such moments aren't really enough to carry this weak and half-hearted effort. For another LibraryThing review that I agree with, see this link: http://www.librarything.com/work/7405... ( )

http://lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.co... ( )

The twenty-year slide in the overall quality of Parker's novels made it inevitable that at some point he would write one that would push me over the edge. This is that book.

Like many of the Spenser-Sunny Randall-Jesse Stone books of recent vintage, this one reminds the reader on every page that the author has officially Run Out Of Ideas. Parker has been recycling plot points liberally, so it wasn't exactly a shock for a story to emerge where Randall runs into Stone, and they hook up romantically. Unsurprising, for sure, but still a slap in the face to Parker fans: Why are you still reading this crap? Can't you see I just want to retire in peace? Can't you see that I don't want to write these anymore, that I've lost all joy in these characters? Why do you continue to buy these books, forcing me to keep churning them out to fill the demand? Don't you people have anything better to do?

Okay, Parker, you win. Your decades-long quest to force me to give up my Spenser Universe addiction has come to fruition. I'm going cold turkey. ( )

The characters and dialogue are good but other than that it just does not seem very well written. If you edited out all the “he said” & “she said”s, you would have a short story. ( )