STONE COLD

Stone Cold is Parker’s fourth novel to feature former Los Angeles cop Jesse Stone, now serving as police chief in suburban Paradise, on the Boston North Shore. Stone is just as tough and nearly as incorruptible as Spenser, the hero of more than thirty Parker novels. But Stone carries plenty of baggage along with his police shield: an ex-wife whom he can’t let go, attachments that he can’t hold onto, and a bottle that he can’t put down. Narrator Robert Forster interprets Stone as a tarnished knight, making him both wise and wizened as he investigates a high school gang rape and tries to track down a bizarre team of serial thrill-killers before they track him down. Forster reads the book in a Midwestern drawl that fits neither LA nor Massachusetts, but he serves up Parker’s hard writing with an appropriate punch that won’t leave the listener cold. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 04]