As a kid, I loved Cross-Over comic stories. You know-- Superman teams up with Batman, or Spiderman fights the Incredible Hulk-- stuff like that.I used to imagine a television episode where the Cartwrights from Bonanza fought a range war against the Barkley's from the Big Valley. Or, what if Paladin and the Rifleman teamed up to clean up North Fork?Blue Screen is a cross-over story. Two of Parker's leading characters, Sunny Randall, private investigator with her bull terrier, and Jesse Stone, soft spoken serious police chief of small Massachussetts town. Sunny is hired to protect movie star, Erin, a gorgeous babe with natural beauty and practically no acting talent. Soon, Erin's personal assistant is murdered and Sunny is asked to find out who did it. Because the crime occurs in Stone's jurisdiction the two champions of justice began to pursue Erin's past and uncover (as usual) a boatload of filth that might be connected to the murder. I have to say that Sunny Randall is almost a female mirror-image of Parker's most popular hero, Spenser, who is often for hire! She's tough, wise-cracking, and stubborn. Parker manages to give her an odd dog and a different background than Spenser, but take away the dog and the divorce and put a dress on Robert Urich (who played Spenser in the television series, and yes, I know he is deceased) he could play Sunny with very little effort. She is much too much like Spenser.However, I like the Jesse Stone character. He, unlike Sunny and Spenser, often holds his tongue. When he does speak, it is with provoking questions. Occasionally, he uses his office to verbally bludgeon someone into place with warnings and not-so-veiled threats like "You should stop or I might have to physically restrain you for the public safety and you might lose some teeth." The fact that Stone has a serious character flaw, an alcohol problem, makes him very real. However, it seems odd that Parker's characters all seem to need some psychological help.The style is typical Parker. He writes crisp, short, chapters that make the reader read "just one more." He invents situations that are interesting and backgrounds that are ominous. However, this time around, even Jesse Stone can't keep this novel afloat. His sexual liasons with Sunny and their growing relationship become the focus of the story, which flaws this novel greatly. Instead of being a great mystery-- it just becomes about their own character flaws. While my reviews often gripe about a lack of characterization, in this case Parker goes too far with romance and not far enough with a good story. The conclusion and resolution left me angry at what I consider to be a HUGE hole in the plot. Not wanting to write spoiler-- I'll let that be nuff said... I will continue to read Parker from time to time-- as I am constantly running into cheap copies of his books at local library sales, etc. However, I consider his material, for me, at least, to be nothing more but "filler" material. Something to fill time that is fairly enjoyable, but that I don't expect to be great stuff.
It is a good novel, but I thought the end needed beefing up.Buddy Bollen, a C movie producer, who made his fortune from a dot-com deal, hires Sunny Randall to protect his girlfriend, Erin Flint, a sexy starlet who is a legend in her own mind. Sunny takes the job, and soon things get complicated. Erin's assistant, Misty, is found dead in the lavish home they share with sugar daddy Bollen. Erin wants Sunny to take charge of the investigation. She doesn’t trust the local Police. “…I'm not leaving it in the hands of some small-town cow-shit sheriff.” She says to Sunny.Sunny takes the case and in the process develops a relationship with Jesse Stone, chief of police in Paradise, Massachusetts. Jesse and Sunny strike it on from the beginning, while investigating and detecting, they learn about each other-and themselves. Both have hang-ups about their ex partners. Trying to find out the Misty's murderer reveals a lot of Erin's past and Buddy’s businesses. Misty was her younger sister. Both became prostitutes when they were at their teens. Erin married her pimp, Gerard Basgall. Buddy Bollen's entertainment business was made up of shady film deals, financed by a mobster out for revenge.It would have been nice if Parker developed what happened to Buddy, but he reaches the end a little too soon. Sunny and Jesse find out who killed Misty, but they realize it was an accidental death. Erin says she did it, and Gerard says he did. Sunny and Jesse let them go.
What do You think about Blue Screen (2006)?
A Sunny Randall novel, which is to say, a Spenser-like detective who likes to shop ... well, perhaps I'm being a bit unfair here, but it's hard to disentangle Parker's spare style of writing from the character with whom I associate that style. Sunny Randall is a female detective, located in Boston, an ex-cop turned private eye. She has connections to the mob through her ex-husband Richie with whom she is still in love. So, given the bare bones above, Sunny's profile is similar to Spenser's (their names even start with the same letter). Anyway, in this particular novel (which I've read before but only remembered after I'd chained myself to the elliptical exerciser) Sunny has been hired to bodyguard (is that a verb?) an unpleasant but vulnerable young woman who is the star of a series of films called Woman Warrior. The cast of characters include Jesse Stone (star of another of Parker's series --- note the "S"), a pimp from LA, several mob types, and a greedy little prick named Buddy Bollen. Because of Parker's superb writing, you'll be finished before you find much to criticize.
—Beth
This is the second runny Sandall Sunny Randall novel I've read and probably my favourite Parker novel to-date, despite all the weird let's cross over characters from all my series stuff that's going on. (Sunny gets the main protagonist of one series for a boy friend and already has the girl friend of the main protagonist from another series for a therapist.) In fact I like Sunny and her boy friend more than I like Spenser and his girlfriend, despite the Spenser novels being far more famous than any of Parker's other series.Susan Silverman, Wunder-therapist, cures all Randall's man-issues with the twitch of an eyebrow, which is really annoying because that never happens back in reality and yet a very realistic approach is taken to the rest of the story, so it feels glaringly out of place.One reason why I prefer this series to the Spenser books I've read is that there is much less macho posturing, because Randall isn't an exceptionally macho woman. Macho posturing, even if it is entirely appropriate to the characters and situation can irritate me if there is too much in too short a time.In my review of Melancholy Baby I was a little negative about Spike, the gay tough-guy friend. However, that is somewhat unfair in that gay characters appear in Parker's books where-as they are conspicuous by their absence in most novels. Parker's gay characters aren't mere stereotypes, either, even if they do suffer from character-recycling with only minor variations - which is true of Parker's straight characters, too.One of the best Parker books I've read.
—Robert
A reader's wish-fulfilment novel - take two successful fictional detectives and put them in the same story. Sunny Randall is engaged as a rather superfluous bodyguard for a film star's baseball practice - in order to advance the fortunes of both a movie and a baseball team the idea is that she will for a time be a real player in a real team. Then the star's personal assistant is found dead, it's Jesse Stone's patch and the game is on. I think I might have got a bit more out of this had it not been only my first encounter with Sunny Randall and my second with Jesse Stone. However, I still enjoyed Robert B Parker's very deft handling. It wasn't quite a Stephanie Plum romp but not far off at times, particularly in the changing rooms of a designer clothes shop in LA. However, the sense of fun serves to accentuate the serious elements Once again Parker's depiction of co-operation between those who should be co-operating as the norm was remarkable. I really felt Sunny's pain when she hears news of her ex-husband, and underneath all the light verbal foreplay is a genuine enquiry about the various meanings of sex in relationships.
—Jennifer
