Night and Day

December 22, 2008
In bestseller Parker's fluffy eighth Jesse Stone novel (after Stranger in Paradise
), the Paradise, Mass., police chief almost effortlessly performs his laconic magic to restore order and right wrongs. When Betsy Ingersoll, the junior high school principal, decides to conduct a check of girls' undies before an eighth-grade dance, it may or may not have been a crime, but it certainly provokes a firestorm of protests. Then there's a Peeping Tom calling himself the Night Hawk, whose activities escalate from watching to home invasions. In addition, the legal activities of a group of adults calling themselves the Paradise Free Swingers are badly affecting two children. Jesse's ex-wife, Jenn, and his deputies, Molly Crane and “Suit” Simpson, lend support. With a few bold strokes, Parker sketches characters and plot, then uses long stretches of his trademark pithy dialogue to carry the story briskly forward. The result may not provide much of a meal, but it's certainly an enjoyable snack.

Most crime novels begin and end with murder, the more grisly the better. Robert Parker's NIGHT AND DAY is a little less predictable, a crime novel in which no one gets killed. James Naughton is the perfect voice for Jesse Stone, an alcoholic retired L.A. detective (played by Tom Selleck in the TV movies) who is now the police chief in the coastal Massachusetts town of Paradise. In this latest adventure, a peeping Tom is disturbing the tranquility of the place, and he's getting bolder. Naughton brings a laid-back attitude to the work with a smooth voice that entices and soothes. He's also a strong enough performer that the listener would know who's talking if the all-too-frequent "he said" and "she said" attributions were eliminated from the text. M.S. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine