"Stranger in Paradise," by Robert B. Parker; Putnam, 304 pages; $25.
In best-selling mystery/thriller author Robert B. Parker's seventh novel
featuring Jesse Stone - police chief of small-town Paradise, Mass. - an
ex-con whom Stone thought he'd never see again suddenly re-appears in
Paradise.
Wilson "Crow" Cromartie, the ex-con who claims to be an Apache, drops by
police headquarters one day to have a chat with the police chief. Confessing
guilt to some crime and turning himself in is the last thing on his mind.
Rather, he is there to suggest that the police chief just sort of stay out
of his way as he goes about some criminal business that he needs to tend to.
Crow was last in Paradise 10 years earlier (in Parker's 1998 work, "Trouble
in Paradise") when he was in a huge shootout that involved his taking (and
later freeing) hostages and eluding police capture, getting away scot-free
with millions in stolen loot. Neither Stone nor anyone else had enough
evidence back then to prove anything against Crow, but everyone knows he is
guilty of the crimes.
What brings Crow back to the town of Paradise of all places is that he has
been retained by a major Florida mobster to track down and return to him his
teenage daughter, who some time ago had been taken into hiding by the
mobster's low-life ex-wife. Crow locates the girl in - talk about
coincidence! - Paradise.
What unfolds is a read that is much of the time fairly entertaining, but in
the end disappointing because it is just too implausible and weird.
What starts out as a tale of the police chief and the criminal cagily
assessing one another ends up with their joining forces as an odd-couple
team in an effort to bring justice and hope for a better future to the
thoroughly mixed-up young daughter of the mobster.
Now how could that happen? Well, much as Crow enjoys crime - he took the
kidnapping job not because he needed the money but because it seemed like a
fun thing to do - and especially much as he enjoys committing murder now and
then - shortly after arriving in town he murders the gang member boyfriend
of the young girl - when the mobster who retained him to kidnap his daughter
tells him to murder his ex-wife while he's at it, Crow draws the line. He
doesn't murder females. What a guy!
So the mobster sends his goons after Crow, which just gives the guy some
more experience in what he already excels at. And at the same time the local
gang members are after Crow. And, of course, the mobster and the gang leader
team up.
Along the way we learn that the police chief and his ex-wife really are
deeply fond of one another despite an abundance of behavioral signs to the
contrary; a local socialite who is a thorn in Stone's side is among the many
carrying on an affair with Stone's sole male officer; his sole female
officer, a nice lady with a great husband and family who would never think
of cheating on her husband, decides she just has to make an exception and
throws herself at the ex-con; a woman with whom Stone is having an affair
also opts for a quick fling with the ex-con - after all, last time he was in
town he had terrorized her by holding her hostage. Then there's the mother
and daughter who seem in competition to see who can be more thoroughly
messed up.
The problem with the book is that it is just not believable to paint such
widespread, near-universal thoroughly dysfunctional conduct. Not when you
are describing inhabitants of small-town America as opposed to, say, recent
governors of New York and New Jersey.
Robert B. Parker has written more than 50 other novels. Many of them are
very good.
A novelist and author of non-fiction books and feature articles, Fred J.
Eckert is a frequent contributor to Copley News Service.
