After the death of author Robert B. Parker, Michael
Brandman took over the Jesse Stone series. The first one, Robert B. Parker’s Killing The
Blues was a fairly good book. It certainly was not Robert B. Parker, but
the book was good and there was the suggestion that Michael Brandman had plans
to push the boundaries a little bit. Unfortunately, this novel is simply nowhere
as near as good while it reads like discarded pieces of a movie script due to
the lack of depth to characters or scenes. The book features three equally weak
storylines that are way too predictable for any mystery reader.
The primary storyline is about threats against
actress, Marisol Hinton, who is in town to film a movie. Her marriage to another
actor is collapsing due to his ego, his lack of movie roles, and his heavy drug
use.
The two secondary storylines involve water usage and
rates and the spoiled teen of a rich family who is acting out.
In a sense, all three storylines in this latest Jesse
Stone novel are about folks acting out in one way or another. In all cases,
those involved get dealt with in easily predictable fashion over the course of
the 278 page novel. A novel that features very little scene description,
nothing new in the Jesse Stone character, and weak storylines that seem to have
come straight from a discarded movie script of the now cancelled series. On a positive
note, the mentions of Jesse’s ex-wife, Jenn, are kept to a bare minimum giving
the impression that Jesse is slowly moving on.
Going back on the promise of a slightly edgier Jesse
Stone, Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice: A Jesse Stone Novel is saccharine
even for this series. One knew that it would be all but impossible for anyone
to continue the Jesse Stone series as written by Robert B. Parker. One hoped that Mr. Brandman would not make it
the series even lighter in terms of storylines, plots, settings, etc. Thanks to
an absolute minimum of scene setting, limited dialogue that often reads forced,
and three storylines where the resolution is obvious from early on, this read
is a very disappointing step backwards and not anywhere near the level of the
last book.
Robert B. Parker’s Fool Me Twice: A Jesse Stone Novel
Michael
Brandman
G.
P. Putnam’s Son (Penguin Group)
2012
ISBN#
978-0-399-15949-7
Hardback
276
Pages
$25.99
Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano,
Texas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple © 2012
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