Your reaction to the simple existence of a Jesse Stone novel written by someone who's not Robert B. Parker will likely define your approach to reading it.
If, like me, you are a long-time reader of the late, lamented Grand Master Parker, you will be rightly skeptical. The stylistic differences, coupled with clearly different skill-sets, will be off-putting. The choices Michael Brandman makes early in the book will drive you crazy. You might want to fling the book out a window, even.
If, however, you come to Killing The Blues as an admirer of the Jesse Stone TV-Movies, on which Brandman and Parker were frequent collaborators, you'll likely be spared such self-righteous angst.
Brandman seems to be blurring the lines between book and movie continuity now, to the point that Killing The Blues is much like those "tv tie-in" books that support CSI and other long-running series. The settings and characters now resemble the movies more than previous books.
By itself, Killing The Blues is a very effective story of obssession, redemption and all the themes Parker made resonate so well. It weaves a few compelling plot-lines together pretty seamlessly. It's very entertaining crime-fiction commerce.
As summer approaches Paradise, Jesse is greeted with a new wave of car thefts, all Hondas. Clearly an organized-crime expansion into His Town to feed their chop-shop appetites. Jesse wants to stop the crimes, but the Paradise Board of Selectmen want to stop the threat to The Season, which creates some cross-purposes, and opportunities for Jesse to display his ironic aversion to authority.
Jesse hears from his old boss in L.A. A former victim of Jesse's dark past, Ruthless Thug Rollo Nurse, has been released, and word has drifted that Jesse will be his target. The cat-and-mouse between Jesse and Rollo form the core of the book's narration. The other threads of Brandman's story weave around it, and provide nice balance.
When Parker died, Jesse seemed headed towards a really fun relationship with Sunny Randall. That's "resolved" rather quickly, so we can watch Jesse do the dance with Alexis Richardson, neice of a town Selectman, and PR person. She wants to launch a Rock Festival in town. Sparks fly, take-out is consumed, frolic ensues.
As Jesse gets close on the car-thefts, Rollo arrives and begins to work his twisted revenge scheme on Jesse. Brandman stages these quite well, creating some real loin-girding moments for us. He also does good work in forcing us to observe Rollo's psychosis as a result of Jesse's Great Flaw. It'll keep ya thinking.
Brandman also takes a trendy whack at school bullying, starting and finishing an episode at the local Junior High providing some character beats for Jesse, but nothing significant beyond them.
So, for Parker fans, what's missing? The obvious is that Parker wrote human dialogue better than almost anyone, so anyone else using the characters is going to suffer by comparison. There's also a marginalization of Molly Crane that is saddening. She's there for comic relief, but the banter between her and Jesse is just functional, totally lacking Parker's insightfulness. She is, here, a reflection of the TV version.
And there's the whole commercial orientation. Parker loved to make money, of course, but he always had something on his mind, and used his characters to flesh out those thoughts. Brandman has a whole other direction here, and it occasionally disrupts the reading experience.
However, anyone getting too high on their horse should remember, in literature, characters always live on. Parker wrote a Philip Marlowe by himself (Perchance To Dream), after finishing Chandler's Poodle Springs, and it was huge fun. Jeffrey Deaver just published a James Bond novel. Ace Atkins (YAY!) will pick up the Spenser series. The key is how involved the Parker estate remains in the execution of these series. That influence will determine the quality of future installments primarily by ensuring selected authors stay true to what made the characters worth continuing in the first place.
So, get Killing The Blues, have fun with it, be wistful, and enjoy the ride. It's what Parker would've wanted us to do.
