- Title: Death in Paradise
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Stone Sunday takes us north to the sleepy town of Paradise, Massachusetts and the third of Robert B. Parker‘s novels featuring Police Chief Jesse Stone. Death in Paradise gives us Jesse looking into the murder of a promiscuous high school student no one seems to miss. Even the girl’s parents deny any ties to young Billie whose body washes up on shore. It seems Jesse is the only one in all of Paradise who cares what happened to her.
The novel is notable for brining Jesse into contact with Gino Fish, whose subordinate Billie worked for as an underage prostitute leading to her murder. Although Gino wasn’t involved in the prostitution ring that got the girl murdered, his introduction begins to further intertwine recurring characters from Parker’s Spenser novels into the shared world of Jesse Stone (and later Sunny Randall).
The other case, which is intertwined throughout the novel, is a common one in police stories involving a battered woman refusing to finger her abusive husband. Jesse’s solution to the problem, after the husband sends his wife to the hospital again, is to threaten the Snyder’s life which provides her some safety but also makes her realize without the violent loop there’s nothing to the marriage. Eventually Jesse is forced to make good on his threat when Snyder attempts to murder his wife after she decides to leave him.
Other plots in the novel continue Jesse’s attempts to get a handle on his relationship with Jenn and the Chief dating both Marcy Campbell and the high school principal continuing the running gag of Jesse’s Lothario stature within the department in the early novels. Death in Paradise also introduces the character of Dix who proves to be an invaluable addition to not only help Jesse deal with issues involving Jenn and his drinking, which he chooses to stop by the end of the novel, but often offers support on cases where Jesse seeks the help of the psychologist.