Robert B. Parker’s Stone’s Throw (A Jesse Stone Novel)

Product Description

Paradise is rocked by the mayor’s untimely death in the latest novel starring police chief Jesse Stone.

The town of Paradise receives a tragic shock when the mayor is discovered dead, his body lying in a shallow grave on a property on the lake. It’s ostensibly suicide, but Jesse’s has his doubts . . . especially because the piece of land where the man was found is the subject of a contentious and dodgy land deal.
 
Two powerful moguls are fighting over the right to buy and develop the prime piece of real estate, and one of them has brought in a hired gun, an old adversary of Jesse’s: Wilson Cromartie, aka Crow.  Meanwhile, the town council is debating if they want to sacrifice Paradise’s stately character for the economic boost of a glitzy new development. Tempers are running hot, and as the deaths begin to mount, it’s increasingly clear that the mayor may have standing in the wrong person’s way.  
 

Review

“Lupica successfully captures the cadences and banter of Parker’s crime fiction….Parker fans won’t be disappointed.”–
Publishers Weekly”Lupica seems thoroughly comfortable carrying on the fictional lives of Robert B. Parker’scharacters. He has the jaunty tone down pat, and everything flows from that with Parker’s people.”
–Booklist

About the Author

Mike Lupica is a prominent sports journalist and the
New York Times-bestselling author of more than forty works of fiction and non-fiction. A longtime friend to Robert B. Parker, he was selected by the Parker estate to continue the Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone series.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE Sunny Randall, with whom Jesse Stone was currently in a relationship timeout, asked him once what he missed the most about baseball.“Everything,” he said.“Even though it broke your heart?”“Even though,” he said. They’d been walking on the beach in Paradise, a couple of miles from where he lived. “Do you ever miss drinking the way you miss baseball?” Sunny said. “Let me answer you this way,” Jesse said. “The worst days I ever had because of drinking were the worst days I ever had. The worst day I ever had in baseball, at least until the one when I got hurt, was great.” That day had been in Albuquerque, Triple-A ball, last stop before the majors, when he’d landed on his shoulder and had his dreams of making the show blow up along with his shoulder. “What about sex?” Sunny asked. Jesse had grinned. “Right here?” Jesse said. “Damnit, I knew I should have brought a blanket.” “You know what I mean,” she said. “Baseball or sex?” “Sex with you, or sex in general?” “In general.” “Baseball,” he said. “Seriously?” “Both pleasurable activities, more with you than anyone I’ve ever known,” he said. “But baseball wasn’t just what I did. Was who I was.” “I thought being a cop was who you are.” “Now it is,” he said. It was one of the last times they’d been together before she went to Los Angeles on a case a few weeks later, unsure of when she would return. She’d been hired by an old boyfriend of hers named Tony Gault, a bigtime talent agent Out There whom she still refused to classify as having been her boyfriend, describing him more accurately, she said, as an itch she’d occasionally felt the urge to scratch. Jesse had met Gault, who wasn’t much different from a lot of Hollywood phonies he’d met when he was still working Robbery Homicide for the LAPD. He’d told Sunny, and more than once, that the next time she had a similar itch she should consider ointment. But they both knew they hadn’t taken this timeout because of the case, or because she was there right now and he was here. They’d decided to take a break because they both knew they needed one. They loved each other, Jesse was certain of that. But she still loved her ex-husband, who had recently helped save her life from some very bad Russians on a case she’d been working. In the aftermath of that, she told Jesse that despite her best intentions, she was still feeling an old, al