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    Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues
    Unavailable
    Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues
    Unavailable
    Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues
    Audiobook4 hours

    Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues

    Written by Michael Brandman

    Narrated by James Naughton

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The Jesse Stone stories continue even after Robert B. Parker’s passing with Killing the Blues. In this novel, Jesse Stone is faced with what begins as a rash of stolen cars and escalates into arson and murder as Stone uncovers how deep this crime wave really goes. All the while, Paradise, Massachusetts is preparing for summer tourism with the help of event planner Alexis Richardson, and she and Stone become involved in a steamy affair.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 13, 2011
    ISBN9780739384909
    Unavailable
    Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues
    Author

    Michael Brandman

    Michael Brandman has produced more than forty motion pictures, including works by Tom Stoppard, Arthur Miller, Neil Simon, David Mamet, Elmore Leonard, Louis L'Amour, Stephen Sondheim, Horton Foote, Eugene O'Neill and Wendy Wasserstein. He co-wrote and/or supervised the writing on eight Jesse Stone movies, each starring Tom Selleck.

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    Reviews for Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues

    3.5/5

    144 ratings21 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      A good job of echoing the style and characterization of Parker's characters.
    • 4/5
      This book was similar to Robert B Parker's books but had a different flavor to the story. I am glad the stories continue.
    • 4/5
      Paradise, Massachusetts, is preparing for the summer tourist season when a string of car thefts disturbs what is usually a quiet time in town. In a sudden escalation of violence, the thefts become murder, and chief of police Jesse Stone finds himself facing one of the toughest cases of his career.

      Jessie Stone is the only character that I read in Robert Parker books. Even though Parker is no longer with us, the writer taking over this series does an excelllent job.
    • 4/5
      Always a pleasure. The Boston connection is always interesting.
    • 4/5
      I miss Parker's writings and Brandman is definitely not Robert B. Parker but I hesitate to find any fault with this book instead I view it kind of like holidays with your parents....it's not the best time you'll ever have but it's warm and it's home.
      If you like the other Jesse Stone books then you will love this one.
      If you've never read any other Jesse Stone books then don't start with this one (the one's written by Parker are much better).
    • 4/5
      We may not have gotten the book if we had realized that Robert B. Parker's Killing the Blues wasn't really Robert B. Parker's. Mr. Brandman captures the style of the Jesse Stone books very well, but, if the book were a painting, it felt like a good counterfeit, not an original. There are several plot lines, many having to do with redemption or the lack thereof. Thanks to Jesse's interference in their lives, some of the people who have done wrong change their ways and become better people. Others do not.
    • 3/5
      It's not bad. Michael Brandman took over after Robert Parker died. This wasn't an unfinished manuscript, this was a completely new novel. It's not quite the same. Molly's character doesn't feel right at all. She seems far to stiff. Jesse isn't too far off the mark, although not quite as misogynistic as he should be. While his character should evolve over time, his initial unwillingness to go to bed with alexis and the lack of the usual banter with Molly seems really off in this novel.
    • 4/5
      I had previously read one of Parker's novels in the Jesse Stone series and I absolutely hated it. With a new author on board, I figured I would give it a try and I was pleasantly surprised. There were multiple story lines going on this novel. The most prominent is an ex-con Stone had seriously messed up while he was drunk and angry coming after him in Paradise. A car theft ring with mob ties ends up in murder. A bullied girl holds her principal at gun point, and Stone develops a love interest. It's almost too much going on for such a short novel, but at least it kept the story moving at all times, and there is little wasted space.I liked the writing style in this novel, more so than Robert Parker's. As I mentioned, the pace was strong. I thought the portrayal of Jesse Stone was well done. There were some elements of believability that were lacking. For one thing, for a small resort town, there is a hell of a lot of crime going on. It's almost a bit much. The other thing that I didn't care for was that the story lines were wrapped up a little too cleanly, and there was too much of a redemption theme going on. Overall, I did enjoy the novel as a light, fun read.Carl Alves - author of Blood Street
    • 4/5
      It’s coming up on the tourist season in Paradise Cove and things are happening that won’t contribute to Paradise Cove being a great vacation destination. Car thefts, murdered dogs, and arson: are these events tied together or not?To add to concerns, a new face in town is Alexis Richardson, hired by the Board of Selectmen as head of public-relations and event planning for the season. Young and filled with ideas to make Paradise the hot vacation place to come and stay. Her plans include a summer music festival along the lines of Woodstock. Big plans for a small town.Sheriff Jesse Stone gets wind that someone from his past is out to retaliate for past actions. This doesn’t bode well for Jesse or Paradise.The book moves along at a good pace. Jesse is not a verbose character, but he gets his point across without confusion.Multiple story lines that twine around each other and come together at a point keep you reading to find out what is next.I like the format of short chapters you can read, whether you have a lot of time or just a few minutes. Another good series to read.
    • 3/5
      Michael Brandman has done a creditable job of replicating Robert B. Parker’s fictional police chief, Jesse Stone, in Killing the Blues. Jesse has to deal with a series of car thefts in his bailiwick of Paradise, Massachusetts; murder; the release from prison of a psychopath bent on wreaking his revenge on Jesse; and the old temptations of the bottle. The dialog is not quite as sassy as we came to expect of Parker (who died in 2010), but Brandman handles a complicated plot line at least as well as the originator of the series. This was an enjoyable, easy read that I devoured in one sitting. (JAB)
    • 1/5
      I read Killing the Blues because I was curious; could another writer continue Robert B. Parker's newer Jesse Stone series of mysteries after Parker's death?

      After page two, it was clear -- the answer was NO.

      Michael Brandman tries -- and we see evidence of Parker's razor-edged dialog sprinkled throughout the book -- but overall, this book just doesn't measure up to Parker's efforts, even when Parker was pretty clearly phoning it in.

      At times the books reads way too flat and procedural, and at others the text actually falls to an almost pulp level. The climactic scene actually made me laugh at the clumsiness of it all.

      In other words, for me, the Jesse Stone series stops here.
    • 2/5
      I always liked the Jesse Stone series better than Parker's Spenser novels. After his death, the series has apparently been taken over by Michael Brandman, and it's been a disappointment. He's tried to capture the staccato cadence of Parker's books and succeeded to some extent, but Stone has lost all subtlety and he's not as interesting a character. Meld that with several irrelevant side-plots that muddy things (cat, bullying, personal vendetta, another real estate agent squeeze, etc.) and one wonders where things are going. Brandman is just trying to hard to add the pop-psychology crap that irritated me in the Spenser novels, and we are expected to believe that Jesse Stone lecturing a group of girls on their bad behavior will immediately reform them. Then he lectures the principal of the school in a silly diatribe. Molly and Suit disappear into the muck whereas in the real Stone books they were developing into interesting characters.

      Oh well. Robert Parker should be left to rest in peace. The idea that anyone could simply pick up and continue a series demeans the author's craft.
    • 3/5
      The first of the "in the style of Robert B. Parker" books that I have read. Joan Parker and the Publisher approved the continuation of the series. It's not Robert B, but it's close enough that as an audio book, and in the Jesse Stone series, it was fine. I'm not sure how I'll feel about someone else putting words in Hawk or Spenser's mouth, but that too, awaits to be seen. If Ludlum and Chandler can go on (And it was Parker who wrote one of the Chandler stories), then I guess so can Robert B Parker. I just wonder if these stories are based on any notes that Parker left behind. Would be nice to know.
    • 3/5
      A little disappointed with the style. This isn't Parker writing this book. I had to check the author to make certain I wasn't reading one of the short chapter, choppy novels by James Patterson. Brandman has written the screenplays for the Jesse Stone TV movies which explains the style. I think I will wait for the TV movies instead of reading the books.
    • 4/5
      Interesting concept. Jesse Stone was a recurring character in Robert Parker's fiction, and it appears that, like Ian Fleming's James Bond, the character will survive the creator's demise. Longtime Parker collaborator Michael Brandman published this novel a year after Parker's death. There's no indication whether this was a manuscript (or at least a plot outline) which Parker had begun, so my guess is that this is a Brandman novel rather than a Parker one.And it's not half bad. Parker's characters feel familiar, and the author's voice sounds like vintage Parker.Alas, even in Parker's heyday Jesse Stone lacked the elan of Spenser or even that of Matthew Hope. Still, it's a good read.
    • 4/5
      This is a Jesse Stone book. Listened to the audiobook and it was typical Jesse with Molly, Suitcase and the rest of the regulars. Man who Jesse assaulted and sent away to prison in California while he was drinking heavily and dealing with his failed marriage comes to Paradise and stalks Jesse. SPOILER ALERT: There's a violent showdown at the end of the book.
    • 2/5
      With their short sentences, short paragraphs, dialogue-heavy style, and terse descriptions Robert B. Parker's mystery novels feel simple. It's only when you start to think about the way they're put together that you realize how much art there is behind the simplicity, and how carefully chosen the words and the sparse lines of description are. Michael Brandman probably knows Jesse Stone and the rest of the supporting characters better than anyone besides Parker himself. He's a competent writer, and he understands Parker's style. The fact that, even with all those advantages, this entire book feels as "off" as a red ace of spades tells you something about how effortlessly good Parker really was.Brandman gets the big things mostly right: The multi-threaded plot feels like a Jesse Stone story, and the characters are recognizably who they are. The small things, though, are consistently wrong. The characters don't quite act or sound like they're "supposed" to, and the rhythms of their conversations are subtly off -- like a comedy act with the lines consistently coming half-a-beat too early or too late. It happens occasionally with Jesse and Molly, more frequently with Jesse and Healy, and pretty consistently with Jesse and Suitcase Simpson. When Jesse talks to less-established characters it becomes excruciating.Missing, too, is the understated crispness of Parker's descriptions. Brandman only adds a sentence or two to what Parker would have written, but it's enough. Ever notice that Parker never, ever describes gunfights at a level beyond: "I shot him twice in the chest, and he went down?" You will, retrospectively, because Brandman wants to tell you (just a little) about how the hero drew his gun, or how the body fell, and even that extra sentence gums up the flow of the scene.If this had been the first book in a series about a small-town Massachusetts police chief with a troubled past, named something other than Jesse Stone, it would have rated 3 stars, maybe more. But both Brandman and the marketing folks at Putnam's wanted to make it a Robert B. Parker book about Jesse Stone, from the pen of somebody else. Problem is, Brandman isn't that good.Maybe nobody is.
    • 4/5
      This is the first Jesse Stone novel that was not written by Robert Parker. It is my understanding that Michael Brandman collaborated on the Jesse Stone movies and I have to say that it almost felt like reading a script instead of a book. There are certain things that have been introduced in the movies that are in this book, i.e. Hasty is out of jail and owns a car dealership, Jesse moving into the house that we see in the movies. I will say I read this book in about two and a half hours it was such an easy read and very enjoyable. I think Michael Brandman did a fine job capturing the essence of Jesse Stone. If you like this series then you should give it a try. As in the Parker versions there is more than one storyline going on and in Jesse Stone fashion he takes care of them one at a time with the help of his law enforcement and some friends on the other side of the law. Thankfully Jenn is only mentioned in passing in this book and hopefully no more. Jesse's drinking also seems to have diminished but not altogether vanished which I like. All in all I will definitely be on the look out for Michael Brandmans next installment of Jesse Stone.
    • 4/5
      Michael Brandman has the "Jesse Stone" character down dead to rights! This is the same character that Robert B. Parker created and animated so well. A good tight story with Jesse Stone as Chief of Police in a small Boston area town of Paradise. Equally at home fighting with the town council or school principal or local gangsters who are starting up a chop shop with Honda's taken off the streets of Paradise. To add to the suspense, budget constraints in California lead to an early release of a psychopath that Jesse had jailed. Now he is looking for Jesse with revenge in mind. Add in the Mayor's beautiful niece who has been hired by the city as an event planner and she has her eye on Jesse. This entanglement and Jesse's adoption by a stray cat that was staying near the new house he purchased provide the formula for an exciting adventure starring our favorite tough, smart, lovable detective, Jesse Stone. He's back!
    • 4/5
      Terse dialog, predicable plot - but extra fun to read and enjoy. How can you not help but like the characters that run crazily through these stories. Brandman seems to be up to carrying on the Parker franchise.
    • 4/5
      This is the first Jesse Stone novel written by Michael Brandman, the Parker estate's choice to carry on the series. Summer is coming to Paradise, and the Board of Selectmen, as usual, wants nothing to mar the peace and serenity of a small town highly dependent on tourist income. Also as usual, something is bound to. This time, it's a rash of car thefts and a series of murdered dogs. Jesse's obsession with ex-wife Jenn may be waning, and his drinking seems to be under control, but another demon from his past is creeping toward Paradise, bent on destruction. The writing isn't quite Parker, but the character is pure Jesse Stone, who has owed quite a lot in my perception to Michael Brandman for some time, due to Brandman's involvement in the TV movies starring Tom Selleck. It is apparent that Brandman intends to make Jesse his own, and that could be an interesting development.