Stiles Island is a wealthy and exclusive enclave separated by a bridge from the Massachusetts coastal town of Paradise. James Macklin sees Stiles Island as the ultimate investment opportunity: all he needs to do is invade the island, blow up the bridge, and get to work. To realise his investment, Macklin, along with his devoted girlfriend, Faye, assembles a crew of fellow ex-cons - all experts in their fields - including Wilson Cromartie, a fearsome Apache. James Macklin is a bad man - a very bad man. And Wilson Cromartie, known as Crow, is even worse.
As Macklin plans his crime, Paradise Police Chief Jesse Stone has his hands full. He faces romantic entanglements in triplicate: his ex-wife, Jenn, is in the Paradise jail for assault; he's begun a new relationship with a Stiles Island realtor named Marcy Campbell; and he's still sorting out his feelings for attorney Abby Taylor. When Macklin's attack on Stiles Island is set in motion, both Marcy and Abby are put in jeopardy. As the casualties mount, it's up to Jesse to keep both women from harm.
'"Parker's sentences flow with as much wit, grace and assurance as ever, and Stone is a complex and consistently interesting new protagonist'
- Newsday
'If Robert B. Parker doesn't blow it, in the new series he set up in 'Night Passage' and continues with Trouble In Paradise, he could go places and take the kind of risks that wouldn't be seemly in his popular Spenser stories.'
- Marilyn Stasio, New York Times [read the full review]
If Robert B. Parker doesn't blow it, in the new series he set up in 'Night Passage' and continues with Trouble In Paradise, he could go places and take the kind of risks that wouldn't be seemly in his popular Spenser stories. His protagonist, a former Los Angeles cop named Jesse Stone, has promise; but does he have resolve? A man prone to drink and bruised by marital betrayal, Jesse tries to salvage his life by becoming Chief of Police of the coastal town of Paradise, Mass. Driving around his little patch in the dead of night and hanging out with the natives in the Gray Gull bar, he is just starting to get a feel for small-town crime (catch the great station house scene in which he goes toe-to-toe with the parents of two teen-age arsonists) when a big-time gang of crooks invades Paradise with a daring scheme to clean out Stiles Island, the high-money end of the community.
These rogues are so colorful, and their heist plans so bizarre, that we nearly lose sight of Jesse, whose attention is otherwise engaged in banal analysis of his shallow former wife. ''Neither booze nor his ex-wife were good for him, and he shouldn't spend too much time thinking of them,'' Jesse tells himself. I would give him an argument on the booze, because his struggles with the bottle produce strong scenes; but his romantic fixation comes close to sinking this book, if not the series itself.
Marilyn Stasio, New York Times