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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780425221105
ISBN number: 0425221105
Label: Berkley
Manufacturer: Berkley
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: October 01, 1999
Publishing house: Berkley
Sale Popularity Level: 81840
Studio: Berkley
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Robert B. Parker and his legendary Spenser series have long been considered the ne plus ultra of detective fiction. But the critics' praise for Jesse Stone's debut in Night Passage proved there was room for an addition to the Parker literary canon. 'A novel as fresh as it is boldParker's sentences flow with as much wit, grace, and assurance as ever, and Stone is a complex and consistently interesting new protagonist. His speedy return will be welcome' (Newsday). Stiles Island is a wealthy and exclusive enclave separated by a bridge from the Massachusetts coast town of Paradise. James Macklin sees Stiles Island as the ultimate investment opportunity: all he needs to do is invade the island, blow up the bridge, and loot the island. To realize his investment, Macklin, along with his devoted girlfriend, Faye, assembles a crew of fellow ex-cons --all experts in their fields--including Wilson Cromartie, a fearsome Apache. James Macklin is a bad man--a very bad man. And Wilson Cromartie, known as Crow, is even worse. As Macklin plans his crime, Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone has his hands full. He faces romantic entanglements in triplicate: his ex-wife, Jenn, is in the Paradise jail for assault; he's begun a new relationship with a Stiles Island realtor named Marcy Campbell; and he's still sorting out his feelings for attorney Abby Taylor. When Macklin's attack on Stiles Island is set in motion, both Marcy and Abby are put in jeopardy. As the casualties mount, it's up to Jesse to keep both women from harm. Filled with 'light, shade, texture, and complexity' (The Boston Globe), Trouble in Paradise is the work of a master.
Amazon.com Review:
Robert Parker's Trouble in Paradise imagines an old-fashioned tough guys' world where most of the women are summed up by their figures and the men are measured by their ability to intimidate. Chief Jesse Stone of Paradise, Massachusetts, is Parker's hero again in this sequel to Night Passage. When he's not thinking about what his girlfriends look like under their clothes, Stone's touring his beat, hanging out at the Gray Gull Hotel bar to get intelligence on local thugs, or interrogating teens about their destructive pranks. But he has a vulnerable side, too, and Parker adds new layers of depth and complexity to his latest series character. Jesse's still reeling from his divorce. He and his ex-wife, Jenn, are not entirely ready to let go. In fact, Jenn has followed Jesse east from L.A. and is suffering in the Boston climate as one of the anchors on the local news. Romance with Jenn is further complicated by Jesse's ongoing attraction to attorney Abby Taylour and his emerging relationship with realtor Marcy Campbell.
Jesse's domestic troubles are gradually overshadowed, however, when ex-con Jimmy Macklin arrives in town. Macklin plans to pull 'the mother of all stickups' on the ritzy Stiles Island in Paradise Harbor. He has figured out that the Stiles Island bridge, with its underpinning of utility cables and pipes, is a veritable lifeline to the mainland, and he's gathered a rogues' gallery of professional crooks and killers to help him take the bridge and make the island into a thieves' paradise. The one problem: Macklin never figured that Paradise, Massachusetts, would have a police chief as tough and resourceful as Jesse Stone.
As usual, Parker's stark and facile prose perfectly complements the masculine sufferings of his hero, and the action of the novel unfolds with an effortlessness that intimates a craftsman at work. With Parker's Spenser safely canonized as a detective fiction legend, Jesse Stone's unfolding world offers a welcome new addition to Parker's ouevre. --Patrick O'Kelley
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Rated by buyers 
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This is the 2nd book in the Jesse Stone series, but I haven't read the very first one. I've been reading Parker hit and miss for a little while now--maybe I ought to get a list and start reading them in order.
Trouble in Paradise is both a caper story and a police procedural. On the one hand, we have Jesse Stone, a small town police chief with a drinking problem and an ex-wife he can't let go of. He's also pretty much a slut, but that's okay, because his ex-wife Jenn, who's just taken a job at the town's TV station, is a slut too. Stone is, however, smarter than he looks.
On the other hand is James Macklin, who's setting up the heist of a century, a la Ocean's 11. He's going to rip off Stiles Island. The whole island--houses, bank, shops, everything. He puts together his team, and we watch him setting it up. He's a bad guy, but he's still pretty appealing--maybe because we get to see him through the eyes of his girlfriend, who understands him very well.
It's a book I could really see as a movie--the race between them to see if Jimmy can pull off the heist before Jesse can untangle his personal life long enough to figure out what's going on and stop him. It had me on the edge of my seat, not wanting to put the book down.
Rated by buyers 
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the jesse stone novels are some of robert b parkers best work, the charater is 3 dimensional and believable. good story lines, a good fun read
Rated by buyers -
I was very pleased with my purchase and there were no problems with delivery and the product came in a timely manner.
Rated by buyers -
Jesse Stone is a great character and this book is a strong second showing for him. "Trouble in Paradise" begins with Jesse on one of his midnight insomniac rambles. When a homosexual couple has their house burned down, he discovers that some teenaged trouble-makers had a hand in it. Determined to set things right, he uses some less-than-honest tactics to get them to confess. While it seems to set one of the boys on the right track, a pair of brothers from a rich family have their parents threaten very first to sue for wrongful arrest and when that doesn't work, their mother tries to have Jesse removed from his position.
Also, a career crook named Macklin and his girlfriend have come to town and are planning the heist to end all heists - they plan to clean out Stiles Island, a rich community connected to Paradise by a bridge over the harbor. Never one to plan small, Macklin decides to isolate the island and rob all the homes, businesses and the bank. Can Jesse find out what is happening in time to stop it?
Well-plotted, intricate and engaging, this book is what a police procedural/thriller is all about. Don't miss it!
Rated by buyers -
TROUBLE IN PARADISE, # 2 in Parker's Jesse Stone series, is a quietly seething thriller with explosives to boom. In this type of deep plot action, here's how one chapter should end and the subsequent one begin:
Chapter ending:
>> When the police car was halfway across, the bridge began to ripple. The ripple turned into a heave. And, as the sound of the explosion came rolling into the real estate office, the bridge went up and the police car went with it, somersaulting slowly in among the pieces of the disintegrating bridge. One of its doors blew away and the hood tore off, and the car languidly turned over and planed onto the gray harbor and disappeared....<<
Next chapter beginning:
>> "Exploded?" Jesse said on the radio. "Twenty calls at least, "Molly said. "At least five people said there was a police car on the bridge when it went." <<
I'm thinking that the above quote would be all I'd need to read in a review, to decide to pick up this novel. As I read the above passage, arriving at it through a steady-speed-progress from the beginning of the book, my very first question, after being impressed with the explosive clarity of Parker's syntax, was, "Did Jesse's two patrolmen survive that percusion and splash?"
Of course I won't tell you what happened before or after the bridge appeared to take a short flight toward heaven then slammed into hell.
Temperature-rising-subplots twined perfectly from Macklin's gang's preparatory machinations to Jesse's personal and professional life's percolation. Various relationship scenes provided entertaining psychological miasma for wading through balsamic sex-pot stews. Jenn was showing daily as a TV weather girl in Jesse's territory, working to keep him while dating openly on the side. Since that didn't keep her busy enough, she attacked Kay Hopkins, a well-heeled, town snob-lady who had caused Jesse grief. Kay's nose slipped from its upward slant as blood spewed from Jenn's landed fist. What does Jesse do with that?
What caused that cowgirl episode was a previous scene which was even more entertaining than Jenn's fist action which landed her in jail. In that earlier scene, Jesse deftly dealt with a group of town snobs (including the Hopkins) and their lawyer. The situation opened in Jesse's office, appearing to be featuring Jesse's tail caught between a lid and a pot. Fear not. Jesse turned the rip-tide with finesse wrought hot. Loved it!
As if those perks in a work of fiction weren't enough, TROUBLE IN PARADISE introduced a "Crow" bad guy, honor-coded-predator, who could be Hawk's dark twin.
This Jesse # 2 had all I could hope for in an engrossing escape read, with an ending firing on all cylinders in Parker's redemption repertoire. (For a true short account featuring redemption and transitions to paradise, see This is Someone's Loved One: An Undertaker's View)
(My review is up of # 1, NIGHT PASSAGE. I enjoy reading Parker's series in order, though I have skipped around at times. See my Spenser Listmania for sequences and blurbs.)
Getting ready to order DEATH IN PARADISE, # 3 Jesse Stone,
Linda Shelnutt
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