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
