ADVENTURES IN PARADISE

by John M. Floyd

Some of you might recall that my title for this column was also a TV series years ago, adapted from James Michener’s fiction. (I still hum the theme music now and then, when I’m in a tropical mood.) My topic today, though, isn’t sailing the South Pacific; it’s Robert B. Parker’s character Jesse Stone, the brooding cop who left LAPD to become the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts.

Parker published eight mystery novels featuring Stone as its lead character, and I understand another was released last month. I’ve read the first eight, and I enjoyed them for the same reasons I enjoy all of Parker’s fiction: tight writing, smart dialogue, and twisty plots. The Jesse Stone novels are:

Night Passage (1997)
Trouble in Paradise (1998)
Death in Paradise (2001)
Stone Cold (2003)
Sea Change (2006)
High Profile (2007)
Stranger in Paradise (2008)
Night and Day (2009)

Split Image (2010) is the latest and possibly the last, since Parker died recently; but I’m hoping there might be some unpublished manuscripts lying around that could add to the series later. There are also two Sunny Randall novels — Blue Screen (2006) and Spare Change (2007) — and at least one Spenser novel — Back Story (2003) — that feature Jesse in minor roles, and other supporting players like Captain Healy and lawyer Rita Fiore are apt to pop up in any of Parker’s mysteries. If I remember correctly, Blue Screen included all three of his lead characters — Spenser, Stone, and Randall.

To me, the first surprising thing about the movies that were made from the Paradise novels was that Tom Selleck was chosen (by Parker himself, I’m told) to play the part of Jesse Stone. I like Selleck as an actor, but had pictured someone far different, and less heroic, in that role. The second surprise was that after seeing the first couple of movies, I came to accept Selleck with no problem. Anyhow, for those who might be interested, here’s a list of those films, all of which are available on DVD:

Stone Cold (2005)
Jesse Stone: Night Passage (2006)
Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise (2006)
Jesse Stone: Sea Change (2007)
Jesse Stone: Thin Ice (2009)

I’ve heard that two more, (Jesse Stone: No Remorse and Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost) are being released this year.

NOTE: This is almost enough to make me reconsider my dislike for titles that have colons in them. Almost.

I’ve seen the first five of the Stone movies and I thought all were well done. The films that were based on novels (Thin Ice was not) stayed true to the storylines, with dialogue far better than what’s found in most crime/suspense films. And Stone comes across as a suitably complex and troubled character: he still loves his ex-wife, even though she’s on one coast and he’s on the other, and he has an ongoing drinking problem. He also has bigtime problems with authority, but all of us like that in a hero. He and the town council are always at odds. In a tense meeting, one of the council members tells him, “We can fire you.” “I know you can,” Jesse says, “but you can’t tell me what to do.”

He has other interesting qualities as well: he loves kids and goes out of his way to steer them in the right direction when their parents can’t, his best friend is his dog Reggie, he’s calm and efficient in every crisis (and there are a lot of crises in Paradise — it’s a regular Cabot Cove in terms of mortality rate), he’s fiercely loyal to friends and those who work for him, he has strong ideas of what is right and wrong, and he will happily bend the rules to do whatever he feels is right. And he’s always modest and easygoing. When people ask to see his badge, he tells them he keeps it in his drawer; when they ask him what he does as police chief, he grins and says he mostly gives out parking tickets. But when the situation requires it, he’s tough. You don’t messe with Jesse.

All this serves to remind me what a marvelous and talented writer we lost when Robert B. Parker passed away. We’re lucky his characters and stories will always be with us.