There are at least three reasons Robert B. Parker might have chosen the coastal town of Paradise, Mass., as the setting for his series about Jesse Stone, a formerly fierce big-city cop seeking redemption as a small-town chief of police. For one thing, it allows Parker to toss off a line like: "It was cool and rainy in Paradise." An idyllic spot like this would also appeal to Parker's keen sense of irony.

In Sea Change glorious harbor scenes of sailboats and yachts gathered for Race Week are tarnished by the ugly crimes Jesse is investigating — the statutory rapes of local girls lured aboard the yachts by dirty old men from Florida and the murder of a woman involved in procuring the victims. While the low-key pace of Paradise would also seem to suit Jesse's contemplative mood as he struggles with a drinking problem and tries to reconcile with his narcissistic ex-wife, his obsessive navel-gazing slows the action to a crawl and makes us wonder if things are maybe a bit livelier in Boston, where Spenser, Parker's more highly evolved sleuth, has long outgrown such adolescent angst.

Marilyn Stasio, New York Times

Filled with tawdry sexual shenanigans, bestseller Parker's fifth Jesse Stone novel (after 2003's Stone Cold) finds the former L.A. cop, now the police chief of Paradise, Mass., tentatively reunited with his ex-wife, Jenn, and approaching a year since his last drink. The murder of a woman aboard a sailboat leads Stone into a world of wealth and depravity centered on a couple of yacht owners from Florida and their crowd. Drugs, pornography, rape and underage sex provide a degrading framework for the murder investigation. Stone gets a valuable assist from Kelly Cruz, a Fort Lauderdale cop, as he traces the backgrounds of victims and suspects. The laconic Stone with his uncertain relationship with Jenn, his struggle with alcohol and his visits to a therapist presents a striking contrast to Parker's primary hero, Spenser. But much of the dialogue is interchangeable: witty, flirtatious, droll and sexually charged. The outcome manages to be both surprising and depressing. Stone is a work in progress whose following is likely to increase as he continues to grow.

Publishers Weekly