Night
and Day ,
by Robert Parker (Read by James Naughton)
One would think that a small coastal town
named Paradise would be a place of peace and quiet.
It has a non-conventional police chief who likes people
and prefers being on a first name basis with everyone.
However, the tranquility is broken when Police Chief
Jesse Stone is called to a junior high school where
a crowd of parents is ready to lynch the principal.
Jesse has Mary, the only woman on the force, accompany
him to find out what is going on. From this point on
the town of Paradise is in a quandary, as one bizarre
event follows the other. In the course of a few short
days and nights, Chief Jesse Stone has the following
crimes and issues to solve and settle:
1. A female principal who lifted the eighth-grade
girls' skirts to see what kind of underwear they were
wearing before they could attend an afterschool dance.
2. A fourteen-year-old girl confides in
Jesse that her parents are in a group of swingers and
wife-swappers.
3. A peeping Tom is harassing women each
night.
4. The peeping has escalated to home intrusions
where a man breaks in when a woman is alone, holds her
at gunpoint, and orders her to strip naked. He then
takes pictures of the woman, but he never touches her
in any way.
After the third woman is accosted, Jesse
receives a letter from the peeping Tom with a picture
of each of the three women. The letter says that the
man is under the influence of his obsessions and cannot
stop. He also says that he can't control his urges any
longer and is afraid he may go farther.
Robert Parker's Jesse Stone once again
leads the listener on an entertaining and humorous adventure
set in his town of Paradise. When people ask him how
he knows what he knows as he deciphers clues, his answer
is always the same, "Because I'm the Chief of Police."
Listeners will enjoy the humorous repartee between Stone
and his staff as they piece the clues of the intriguing
mystery together. As Jesse offers counsel and guidance
to the people of Paradise, he works with his own therapist
to help him deal with his own problems. Although he
makes huge breakthroughs in this book, there is the
feeling that Parker will bring him back again to give
him a chance to achieve happiness. The listener can
only hope that there will be many more Jesse Stone books
and that they will all be as satisfying as Night
and Day.
John
Mormon
5/15/09
|
