A new Robert B. Parker tale arrives — 15 years after his death
When author Robert B Parker died in 2010, aged 77, he left behind a rich legacy of crime fiction, including nine novels featuring the troubled police chief from the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts, Jesse Stone.
Since his death, there have been 12 more Jesse Stone novels, written, in turn, by Michael Brandman, Reed Farrel Coleman and Mike Lupica. Now, for the 22nd instalment, ‘Robert B, Parker’s Buried Secrets’ (GP Putnam’s Sons), the baton has been passed to novelist Christopher Farnsworth.
When Stone discovers a dead body in a run-down property that looks like “it was auditioning for a landfill”, it appears, on first sight, to be nothing more than the death of a lonely old man. “Older men, living alone, with no close friends or family nearby, occasionally ended up like this,” writes Farnsworth.
“Waiting for someone to discover them.”
But Stone soon finds a Polaroid of a man shot in the head near the body, followed by dozens more images, all, apparently, of murder victims. “The pictures were all of dead men. Gunshot wounds. Blood. Some staring dead-eyed, some with their eyes closed as if they were blinking or sleeping. All starkly lit in the camera’s flash” he writes.
Then, stuffed in the couch, he discovers stacks of cash. Two million dollars, in fact.
The investigation leads Stone into the dark underbelly of the Boston mob and to an elderly former mobster, just as hit men descend upon Paradise determined to find the missing millions, prepared to do whatever it takes to get them back.
It’s an investigation hampered not just by the closed ranks of the mob but by internal indifference, resistance and obstruction within Stone’s own department.
There is also a price on Stone’s head and a plot to kill him led by Raney, an ex-Afghanistan and Iraq veteran. “Raney didn’t mind killing people. He was, in fact, pretty good at it,” writes Farnsworth.
Make no mistake, ‘Buried Secrets’ is a classic Parker novel, filled with sharp dialogue, compelling characters, and a trademark tightly woven plot. Fans of the series won’t be disappointed. –Gavin Newsham
