Night and Day

In Paradise, Massachusetts, Chief Jesse Stone faces a string of unsettling invasions into women’s private lives. They’re disturbing enough, but Parker layers the narrative with the deeper trespasses of the human heart. Jesse’s personal struggles are drawn with a tenderness that feels earned, never forced, and Parker’s taut dialogue cuts through the haze like a porchlight on a humid night.
Yet it’s the novel’s ending that truly shines—a conclusion for Jesse that I’ve hoped for a long time. Even if the rest hadn’t been this good, I’d still give it five stars just for the way Parker brought Jesse home.

Night and Day, is the 8th novel in Robert Parker's "Jessie Stone series. Parker published it at the age of 78, a few months before he died. This work was a half-hearted effort that shows few to none of the attributes of Parker's better work. The plot is mundane and the action is non-existent. In addition, the dialogue (a feature for which some of Parker's novels are well-known) is routine and unimaginative, with barely a whit of humor or cleverness. It consists of page after page of call-and-response one liners, punctuated by the maddeningly standard "he said"/ "she said" attributions.

Throughout the book series, protagonist Jesse Stone has been the alcoholic police chief of the small Massachusetts town of Paradise. He drinks because show more his life is largely a failure and because he is still tied to his highly- promiscuous ex-wife Jenn, with whom he has occasional sex, when she's not hopping into bed with some other man. The title of this book is taken from a George Gershwin song that Jesse sings one night while drinking alone, as he feels sorry for himself.

Unlike the other books of the series, in Night and Day Jesse is finally presented with crimes and situations of the small-town variety. There's the voyeur ("peeping Tom") who likes to watch middle-aged women undressing, and a female high school principal who gets in trouble with parents for checking to see whether the high school girls are wearing appropriately modest underwear. And then there's a local swing club whose (perfectly legal) activities come to Jesse's attention. Just when the reader is yawning, things heat up when the voyeur graduates to home invasion, forcing women at gunpoint to disrobe so that he can photograph them, but leaving them untouched. The only real "action" in the book occupies two sentences in the next to last chapter when the cops shoot the voyeur, in one of those bloodless, silent deaths that only happen in the laziest fiction. Oh, and Jesse apparently breaks up with Jen, without drama or explanation, in this case in three sentences.

Most likely, Parker's advanced age explains the perfunctory nature of this work. It shows the author at his weakest, much like its immediate predecessor High Profile. New readers are advised to stick to the earliest works in the series. Or better still, read Raymond Chandler, Elmore Leonard, and Don Winslow show less

Robert Parker’s novels all have a cadence to them that many people find disconcerting. An almost staccato dialogue, it can be especially prominent in an audiobook such as this one in the Jesse Stone Series. I rather like it.

Jesse is faced with two peculiar cases: the woman principal of the school has parents irate because she dained to lift the skirts of the girls to make sure they had on appropriate undergarments before a dance (no thongs, thank you); and the other a man obsessed with watching women undress at night through their windows, his obsession escalating to entering their homes during the day and forcing them to disrobe at gunpoint and then writing Jesse about it.

Everyone is in therapy in this novel: Jesse sees Dick for his show more drinking and inability to deal with his ex-wife’s quasi-abandonment of him; Sunny Randall (a character from another Parker series) is being therapyized by Susan Silvermann (a therapist from the Spencer series); and Betty Ingersoll, the aforementioned principal gets forced into therapy in the end and her husband should have been. It’s true most of them are a bit wacko, but a lot of the psycho-babble that’s delivered in many of the interviews seems more sermonizing than enlightening. I suspect Robert Parker must have been in therapy for decades. But, all things, considered, I enjoyed the book and the Jesse Stone character. show less

This is the 2nd to last Jesse Stone mystery actually written by Robert B. Parker. Other authors have continued with the Jesse Stone series under license from Parker's estate. I tried to read one of those written in the style of RBP books but nobody could do Parker's dialog except Parker himself. Parker died in 2010. This story is about a peeping tom who escalates into other things. It also continues Jesse Stone's mostly off again relationship with his ex-wife Jenn the TV weather girl/actress/reporter. Jesse Stone's relationship with his ex-wife reminds me of the Dan Hick's song "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away"? The other members of the Paradise, Massachusetts small police department appear including Luther "Suitcase" Simpson show more and Molly the only woman on the force. Several characters from the Spencer stories also spill over into Day and Night, including MA State Police Lt. Heally and Attorney Rita Fiore. show less

This was the eighth novel written by now deceased Robert B. Parker in the Jesse Stone series. Jesse Stone, about 35, is the police chief of the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts. He is also an ex-alcoholic and he is still involved with his ex-wife. But he has made inroads into the corruption and crime in Paradise, and is well liked by the police force.

In this book, Stone is investigating a character who calls himself the “Night Hawk.” The Night Hawk started out as a relatively harmless peeping tom, but he has moved on to home invasions in which he forces women to strip naked at gun point. As it happens, Jesse is also investigating swingers groups. When the women in the group identify a man who likes to look but not touch, Jesse show more thinks he may have found the Night Hawk. The dénouement involves using Jesse’s faithful female assistant, Molly, as bait for the bad guy.

To a large extent, the entire book revolves around the various sexual obsessions of several characters. The Night Hawk is intent on looking at naked middle-aged women. Various members of the swinging couples club are into having sex with other peoples’ spouses. And as in all the earlier Jesse Stone books, Jesse is obsessed with his ex-wife, Jenn. A substantial number of pages are devoted to Jesse’s discussions with his psychoanalyst about his own obsessions and those of the potential suspects.

As is typical of Parker’s books, the subplots and snappy dialog are more interesting than the main plot. I sometimes enjoy finding out how many donuts the individual cops will consume more than I enjoy the solving of the crime. Parker, who has made Jesse Stone a former minor league baseball shortstop, is also particularly good at describing the difference between a pretty good athlete’s skills and those of a genuine major leaguer. In any event, this novel is a good representative of Parker’s genre.

Evaluation: Enjoyable and diverting, if not earth-shaking. show less

The Night Hawk, a serial peeping Tom is on the loose in Paradise, Massachusetts. When simple voyeurism isn’t enough for him, he begins to break in and force women to strip naked so that he can photograph them. Jesse Stone draws The Night Hawk out by pressuring a group of local swingers in town.

Parker again builds a fairly realistic plot for a small town chief of police – peeping Tom turned home invader – and manages to handle the pathology for this kind of criminal fairly accurately. As mentioned in previous reviews of the series, Parker seems a little too focused on the sex, especially obsessive sex, in his stories.

Bottom Line: Not the best of the series but not the worst either – a fairly realistic plot, even if there is show more still a little too much obsessive sex.

3 ½ bones!!!! show less

Night and Day Jesse Stone Mystery by Robert B. Parker
Lewd conduct by the junior high school principal. Others have stated she's looking at the girls underwear. Her husband is the town's lawyer and she knows she's protected.
And the peeping tom now goes into houses and at gun point takes pictures of nude women.
One of the girls wants the police chief to stop her parents from being swingers.
Love how the investigations go with all the things going on at one time.
What a town, Paradise, MA.