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Petrov Ognowski is dead. A bullet bounced around inside his skull for about six hours before Suit Simpson, a patrol officer in the small Massachusetts town of Paradise, found the body. Petrov worked for Reggie Galen, one of two crime bosses who call Paradise home. The other, Knocko Moynihan, lives across the street from Galen. Suit's boss, chief of police Jesse Stone, finally has occasion to find out why two onetime rivals choose to be neighbors. (Seems they married twin sisters, Rebecca and Roberta, known as the Bang Bang Twins in high school.) Reggie and Knocko are shocked about Petrov's fate but give Jesse no help with the case. In the meantime, Jesse, still hurting from the latest breakup with his ex-wife, is helping old friend, private detective Sunny Randall, star of her own series, track down a teenager who has moved in with a New Age commune. The three nonconverging plotlines are linked tenuously by one theme: the search for love the two mobsters with their Bang Bang twins; the teenager, denied affection from her rigidly aristocratic parents, with her commune cohorts; and Jesse and Sunny with each other. And the crimes? The commune is more creepy than comfy, and the Bang Bang Twins may have set in motion a series of events that will lead to violence. Parker's ninth Jesse Stone novel finds the series in slight decline. The plotlines are thin hence the need for three but the dialogue is sharp, and the Jesse-Sunny romance has possibilities.--Lukowsky, Wes Copyright 2010 Booklist

Bestseller Parker's enjoyable ninth novel featuring Paradise, Mass., police chief Jesse Stone (after Night and Day), focuses on Stone's deepening connection with PI Sunny Randall, the star of her own series (Spare Change, etc.). Both Jesse and Sunny are still recovering from failed relationships, and Parker does a nice job of integrating their separate therapy sessions (in Sunny's case, with Susan Silverman, the significant other of Parker's best-known detective, Spenser) with two criminal investigations. The parents of 18-year-old Cheryl DeMarco ask Sunny for help in getting Cheryl out of a religious cult, while Stone probes the gunshot murder of Petrov Ognowski, a mob soldier whose boss, Reggie Galen, is the next-door neighbor of another gangster. Neither case is particularly compelling on its own, but they effectively serve as plot devices for the main characters to understand more about themselves and each other. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

While his ladylove, Boston shamus Sunny Randall, wrestles with the problem of a young woman who's left her parents to join a cult, Paradise, Mass., police chief Jesse Stone (Night and Day, 2009, etc.) investigates a pair of mob hits that are much more than mob hits. The execution-style shooting of Petrov Ognowski, a soldier in the pay of allegedly retired North Shore mob boss Reggie Galen, would be a routine murder if it weren't for two complications that swiftly follow. One is the execution-style shooting of Knocko Moynihan, the allegedly retired South Shore boss and Reggie's longtime friend and current neighbor. The other is the possible involvement of the two old friends' wives, identical twins Rebecca Galen and Roberta Moynihan, ne Bangston. Jesse can't figure out why such lovely ladies would prove such attentive helpmeets to a pair of thugs. He gets further data when the sisters, known in high school as the Bang Bang Twins for reasons that only began with their birth name, put the moves on him. In between times, Sunny Randall, who's come to Paradise to urge 18-year-old Cheryl DeMarco to leave the Bond of the Renewal at the behest of parents who seem even scarier than the Patriarch of the Bond, holds Jesse's hand, and selected other parts, en route to a series of developments as satisfying as they are unsurprising. Once again Parker leans on his distinctive voice to rescue an ambling plot, unfolding expertly but aimlessly, that seems borrowed from a middling episode of Homicide: Life on the Street. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Petrov Ognowski is dead. A bullet bounced around inside his skull for about six hours before "Suit" Simpson, a patrol officer in the small Massachusetts town of Paradise, found the body. Petrov worked for Reggie Galen, one of two crime bosses who call Paradise home. The other, Knocko Moynihan, lives across the street from Galen. Suit's boss, chief of police Jesse Stone, finally has occasion to find out why two onetime rivals choose to be neighbors. (Seems they married twin sisters, Rebecca and Roberta, known as the Bang Bang Twins in high school.) Reggie and Knocko are shocked about Petrov's fate but give Jesse no help with the case. In the meantime, Jesse, still hurting from the latest breakup with his ex-wife, is helping old friend, private detective Sunny Randall, star of her own series, track down a teenager who has moved in with a New Age commune. The three nonconverging plotlines are linked tenuously by one theme: the search for love—the two mobsters with their Bang Bang twins; the teenager, denied affection from her rigidly aristocratic parents, with her commune cohorts; and Jesse and Sunny with each other. And the crimes? The commune is more creepy than comfy, and the Bang Bang Twins may have set in motion a series of events that will lead to violence. Parker's ninth Jesse Stone novel finds the series in slight decline. The plotlines are thin—hence the need for three—but the dialogue is sharp, and the Jesse-Sunny romance has possibilities. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

First a low-level mobster is killed. And then a big, bad crime guy. Thank goodness Jesse Stone has Sunny Randall around to help him on this case. Classic Parker. Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

Bestseller Parker's enjoyable ninth novel featuring Paradise, Mass., police chief Jesse Stone (after Night and Day), focuses on Stone's deepening connection with PI Sunny Randall, the star of her own series (Spare Change, etc.). Both Jesse and Sunny are still recovering from failed relationships, and Parker does a nice job of integrating their separate therapy sessions (in Sunny's case, with Susan Silverman, the significant other of Parker's best-known detective, Spenser) with two criminal investigations. The parents of 18-year-old Cheryl DeMarco ask Sunny for help in getting Cheryl out of a religious cult, while Stone probes the gunshot murder of Petrov Ognowski, a mob soldier whose boss, Reggie Galen, is the next-door neighbor of another gangster. Neither case is particularly compelling on its own, but they effectively serve as plot devices for the main characters to understand more about themselves and each other. (Feb.)