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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Jesse and Sunny, moving forward., February 25, 2010
So let's deal with the elephant in the room right away: how does one review a book when the author unexpectedly dies while it's being read?
The death of Dr. Parker was a shock to the genre community, to be sure. Eulogies steeped in eloquence can be found with just a few clicks. The eloquence is deserved, Parker saved the PI genre. That is not debatable. So we will leave those eulogies for you to find (we recommend the one from the NY Times), and say, going forward, this review takes that sad fact into account not one bit.
Split Image is more accurately described as a Jesse Stone/Sunny Randall Novel, both characters are present, together and apart.
Our story begins as Sunny visits Jesse for professional consult. She's been hired to look into an "eccentric" religious organization based in Paradise known as The Renewal. Her clients are parents whose daughter has moved into their house in Paradise. Sunny isn't quite sure if her clients are worried about their daughter or their reputation, and she starts her investigation by getting a briefing from the Paradise Police Chief, with whom she has an interesting romantic relationship. This briefing is filled with the banter that Parker is most famous for, and we immediately feel at home with these two. We like the fact that they are each others' refuge from bad situations in their own lives--Jesse's, the near-constant disappointment brought by his ex-wife, Jenn; Sunny, the irresolvable distance between her and her ex-husband, Richie.
During their chat, a body is discovered in Paradise, that of Mob Enforcer Petrov Ognowski. Jesse leaves Sunny to her business, and start digging. He finds that Petrov was a soldier for Reggie Galen, who lives in a very fashionable house, next door to a nearly-identical house where resides Knocko Moynihan, another "colorful" fella. He then finds out that both gentlemen are married to....wait for it....IDENTICAL TWINS. Rebecca and Robbie, the Bang Bang Twins.
Let your minds get busy, because Parker clearly did the same thing. Two women, growing up separate but the same. Dressing with the same clothes. Making every effort to be indistinguishable. Sleeping with each others' boyfriends, etc.
Parker has big fun exploring the psychosis of all this, from Jesse interviewing the parents, to being a temporary object of the twins' affection during an interview.
Sunny works her way through The Renewal, and her first impression is fairly benign. A little kooky, but her client's daughter seems both happy and healthy. She reports this to her clients, then learns the daughter has disappeared from The Renewal residence. Vetting the usual suspects, Sunny moves her focus back to the cult, and things get pretty interesting at that point. Along the way, Parker shares Sunny's therapy session with Boston's Greatest Shrink, Susan Silverman. We always enjoy these interludes, as they provide a strictly empirical look at Susan, something we definitely don't get from the Spenser books. As she pokes into The Renewal, it will surprise no one that things aren't as benign as she once thought.
Don't wait too long for these two cases to intersect, because they don't. They simply give us the joy of watching Jesse and Sunny, together and apart, do what they do and then ruminate on it. Sound familiar? It should.
And that's the key to why Parker's books are so effective. He lets his characters tell the story. He puts them on the path, and then more or less gets out of the way.
Split Image moves the stories of both Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall, together and apart, forward. Parker weaves in the great supporting cast in Paradise, primarily Molly Crane and Suitcase Simpson, with his usual skill.
At its core, it's a story of what happens when a childhood psychosis is untreated, perhaps encouraged, and manifests itself in adult behavior. Parker excels at this kind of superficial examination (we're not interested in clinical, are we?) to tell his story, and it's the main strength of Split Image.
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7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good, solid Parker, February 25, 2010
Split Image: A Jesse Stone Novel
Robert B Parker 2010
Good, solid Parker 5*
If you've liked the recent Jesse Stone novels such as Night and Day, this one should appeal to you as well, mellow and thoughtful as opposed to exciting and suspenseful. Jesse's personal relations and thoughts (and those of Sunny Randall who also figures prominently in the book) seem equally as important as the actual criminal cases and investigative work, and even those are remarkably low key for a double gang-land homicide, religious cults and abductions.
Jesse's case shows up in the trunk of an abandoned Cadillac, the corpse of one Petrov Ognowski, a small time strong-arm man who worked for Reggie Galen, a mob boss supposedly retired to Paradise ... right next door to another major thug, Knocko Moynihan. When Jesse visits Reggie and Knocko, he is astonished to find them maried to two beautiful and charming women, identical twins, both seemingly devoted to their husbands ... which triggers a fit of jealous depression when he compares them to his ex, Jenn. The plot only thickens when another mobster is found dead in Paradise, and others disappear from the Galen and Moynihan enclaves, and, in typical Parker fashion, Jesse digs into the past of the lovely twins, revealing that not all is well in Paradise.
Sunny Randall, meanwhile, visits Jesse to ask a bit of help with her current case, finding a young woman who has joined a religious group called the Bond of the Renewal, which has set up shop in Paradise, and encourage her to come home. The Renewal seems relatively straightforward, Cheryl DeMarco there by her own choice, and indeed the Concord-dwelling parents far wackier and more sinister. Of course not all is well in this corner of Paradise either.
Jesse, as usual, skirmishes with the Demon Rum (ok, Scotch), even loses a round or two, and vents to his wise ex-cop therapist, Dix. Sunny, meanwhile, runs off to her own wise therapist ... someone named Susan Silverman who practices in Cambridge. Since Spenser isn't dragged into this one, Sunny takes over the role of commenting on how beautiful and "put together" Susan is, and reminding us that she has a Harvard Ph.D. They both have breakthroughs, or at least insights (so why do they still need to go back after all these years?), and discuss their respective therapies with each other amidst occasional canoodling. For the Renewal case has brought the two together again (as foreshadowed in Night and Day). They end on a tentative note, still haunted by the ghosts of Jesse's Jenn and Sunny's mobster ex, Richie. Alas, we'll never know whether they can find a relationship in the here and now, burying those ghosts, or will continue floundering in the Paradise tides.
I could give this 4 or 5 *s, but will round up as a farewell gesture.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Vintage Parker, March 15, 2010
I really liked this Jesse Stone novel. I love the way he goes about solving crimes and his ruminations. I can't help picturing Tom Selleck as I read the book. Sunny Randall is a welcome addition. She has her own case to investigate and her style is so different from Stone's. I love that she visits Dr. Susan Silverman. It's great to read about her from a client's perspective. A throughly enjoyable read. I will Robert B. Parker.
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