Robert B. Parker rebounds with Stranger in Paradise, the best of the three novels I picked up for a buck at the library sale. After turning off my filters, I sat back and enjoyed a good read, a happy reminder of the kind of panache Parker used to produce in his heyday. Yes, it's still merely a novella and, yes, all of the objections I've recited in relation to earlier Parker novellas still apply, but this book has a sort of happy elan to it, a strong pace and a commitment to action that the other two distinctly lacked.

Published this year (2008), Stranger in Paradise features our friend, small-town police chief Jesse Stone, as the protagonist and, thankfully, there is absolutely no sign of Sunny Randall in the book, other than a single brief mention along the way. When an old friend, cold-blooded killer Wilson Cromartie ("Crow"), comes to town with a mysterious mission to perform, Stone and his force go on immediate alert. They tangled with Crow ten years ago, you see, and, before the self-described Apache warrior left town the last time, a lot of people died, including two of the town's boys in blue. Forced by circumstances and their own personality parallels, Stone and Crow soon find themselves working together toward a common goal: saving a rebellious 14-year-old girl from her gangster father and her gangbanger boyfriend while keeping as many other people alive as possible.

Woven into the fabric of this violent storyline are two interesting subplots: a wealthy white neighbourhood's desperate battle to stop a school for underprivileged Hispanic kids from opening in their midsts and Stone's own on-going effort to work out his relationship with his ex-wife Jenn, a beautiful TV investigative reporter who moves back in with him as part of the attempt to take care of the 14-year-old.

This is a violent book — Crow guns down a gangbanger early on in order to prove his own machismo, then picks off two gangster types in cold blood later in the novella while the gangbanger executes the 14-year-old's mother in a brutal development that Stone and his crew treat as a minor inconvenience — but Parker ultimately chickens out when push comes to shove. The climax, once again, is a disappointment, a well-plotted set up where Stone and his force sweep in to arrest all (and I mean ALL) of the perps and their comrades before anything too nasty happens. Even the enigmatic Crow, who loves nothing better than a gun battle, simply fades away into the background during that epic scene, uncharacteristically using the confusion of the developing fire fight between the gangbangers and the gangsters to disappear, rather than to indulge himself in some gratuitous killing.

It's as if Parker got to that point in the writing process and thought: well, I've almost reached my 40,000-word limit and I really don't think I can handle writing such a complicated scene so maybe I won't bother; I'll make it clean and easy, even if it doesn't suit the personalities of the characters I've so carefully created.

Again, I liked this book but with many reservations. I think the plot is stronger and more interesting than the last two Parker novellas I've read but it still plays out as a series of superior, independent men moving effortlessly through a world where no-one else matters. Crow, though interesting in some respects, ultimately fails as nothing more than a negative version of Stone himself. Parker indulges in numerous explications of how and why these two strong, self-contained men can know, understand and respect each other without ever having to spend any time together. They know each other because they are cut from the same cloth; they are each other. Violent, witty, uber-capable, utterly independent, sharing a strong moral code that says, while men are for killin', women are for protectin' and lovin'.

Every woman in the book swoons over Crow, in ways that they wish they could swoon over Stone. Even Molly Crane, the Catholic, mother-of-four, devoted wife who serves as Jesse's right hand on the police force, ends up sleeping with the cold-blooded assassin and convincing herself that this little indulgence of her primal female urges is acceptable since it apparently hurt no one and won't change her relationship with her family. It's a not-too-subtle way for Parker to consummate the erotically charged relationship between Molly and Jesse (Crow's positive alter-ego) without sullying Stone's moral standing.

As in the other Parker books, all characters speak with one voice, in one style, with a similar wit and morality. In fact, Parker appears so incapable of creating anything new in the way of character that the parallels between Stone and Spenser (the protagonist in Parker's earlier books) are blatantly and painfully obvious. Add in Crow, the ultra-capable, cold-blooded, member of a racialised community and Parker has recreated the Spenser/Hawk relationship to the point of idiocy. The one major difference — Spenser was a private eye and Stone is a police officer — actually represents one of the major weaknesses of this new series: whereas Spenser could credibly flout the law when his personal morality required it, Stone either cannot (since he is a cop) or must go to extreme lengths to get around it, leaving the reader shaking her head in disbelief.

Sex is, again, a game to be played and not to be confused with love or intimacy or commitment. Women are objects, littered around the city so that men can either protect them as fragile things of beauty, have sex with them in the on-going game or ignore them and their lives and deaths as unimportant.

it is ironic that, at the centre of this tale is the 14-year-old, Amber, who has already been molested by her father's posse, ignored by her obese, alcohol-abusing mother and forced to have sex with every member of her boyfriend's gang, which boyfriend is then ready and willing to sell her back to her father for $10,000. Stone goes through all this rigamarole to save her from that terrible life and escape into... into... what? A world where women are nothing more than the possessions and sexual playthings of powerful men.

Tags: Parker, Mystery, Stranger In Paradise

I had an epiphany as I read High Profile, Robert B. Parker's 2007 Jesse Stone "novel".

The first inkling I had came when I got confused as to who was speaking in a long passage of dialogue between two characters. This shouldn't be so confusing, I thought to myself. It's just two characters. So I started trying to figure out why. I read the passage over again, then a third time. I got confused each time. And then it hit me. It's the paragraphing that is throwing me off. Parker starts a new paragraph every line. Here's what I mean (and I'm making up this passage since I can't be bothered to track down a real example).

Sunny smiled.

"Why do you say that?"

"I don't know."

"You've got to have a reason."

Jesse looked over her shoulder at the lake.

"I don't have a reason."

"But you have to. People don't do things for no reason."

Sunny checked over her shoulder in case a bird was about to land on her.

"I guess I had a reason."

Jesse nodded.

"But I don't know what it is."

Did you see it? Parker puts the line of dialogue in a separate paragraph from the speaking character's physical action. Whereas most writers would, as my friend John would say, do an SPSP (same person, same paragraph), Parker separates action from dialogue. And it's confusing.

Why does he do it?

I didn't know. But then I registered how little text there is on each page. And how short his chapters are. And how little exposition there is as opposed to dialogue.

And it hit me. Parker's writing short stories —novellas at best —and passing them off to his unsuspecting readers as real life novels. I mean, the book is 290 pages long. That's fairly substantial, you would think.

So, my curiosity piqued, I decided to do a little test. First, I chose a similar book to which to compare Parker's tome: Dick Francis' Break In, a 272-page novel of which I have a hard-cover copy. The books seem to be about the same size. In fact, once I measured them (yes, I'm that anal), I realised that they are exactly the same size and that Francis' book has just 18 fewer pages than Parker's.

A good set to compare.

So then I opened High Profile at a random page — page 146, in fact — and counted the words on the page. Page 146 of the hard cover version of High Profile in my possession has 213 words on it. Then I counted the words on the next 9 pages in order to establish a reasonable sample from which to draw an average. 76, 66, 176, 185, 188, 182, 66, 94 and 166. The total over 10 pages was 1412, for an average per page of 141.2 words. Multiply that by 290 pages and the book contains 40,948 words in total. Yikes. I've been taught that a novel MUST be at least 60,000 words to be considered for publication and that 80,000 or more is a much safer bet. But Robert B. Parker's High Stakes is only 40,948 words long. No wonder I could read it so fast!

What about my comparison book, Break In? In order to be as fair as possible, I counted the words on the same ten pages —146 to 155 — to get my average and total. 307, 363, 394, 388, 372, 157, 254, 374, 356, and 370, for a total of 3335. That's an average of 333.5 words per page. Multiply by 272 pages and the Francis book includes 90,712 words in total.

Aha.

I can't help but feel that Parker and/or his publisher is/are playing fast and loose with his readers' money. They're charging us regular book prices for half a book and using every trick in the... ahem, book to fool us into thinking we're getting a full-length novel: breaking single paragraphs in two to create more lines, putting more space between lines of type, breaking the book into more chapters so that more pages are half empty, and such like.

And, of course, in counting Francis' words, I couldn't help but read them as well. And I realised that Parker couldn't hold a candle to "Dick Francis" (whether it's actually Dick who did the writing or his wife or somebody else) as a writer, no matter how much I seem to enjoy Parker's novellas. Francis' plots are more intricate and creative, his villains more complex and his action sequences much more breathtaking. I still have one more Parker on my Bed-Side Table but I swear, when that's done, I'm going to go back and enjoy Francis' entire run of novels again.

After all that, how was High Profile, you ask. Witty writing. All the characters are the same (as in other books and as each other) and the portrayal of women is just as bad as in the last book. The plot is paper thin and you can't even bank on Parker for riveting action sequences any more. In this book, there is no action. Sure, Stone attacks one man and beats him senseless. But it's not much of a fight. The man had just opened the door when Stone attacked him. And the climax of the book comes when Stone shoots the villain three times in the chest in what he rightly refers to as a "suicide by cop". All in the last 27 pages. The rest of the book is talk, talk, talk and half the time you have no idea who's doing the talking.

Tags: Parker, Mystery, High Profile

The local video store held a sale this past weekend on previously viewed (read "used") DVDs: four for $20. If you can find four you like, it's a pretty good deal. I found four I liked: American Gangster, Run Baby Run (see other entries for Dennis Lehane discussions), The Majestic and a fairly new British romcom I've never heard of called Imagine Me & You.

Not surprisingly, at least for me, the first one I chose to watch was the romantic comedy, Imagine Me & You. Starring Piper Perabo, Lena Headey and Matthew Goode, the movie must have been in and out of theatres fairly quickly for me to have missed it. I don't know much about any of the stars nor have I heard of the writer/director, Ol Parker, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. All the comments on the case were positive and, having very much enjoyed Kissing Jessica Stein, I was interested to see what they would do with the same-sex relationship.

Imagine Me & You is the story of Rachel (Perabo), a sweet young woman who seems destined to a "happily ever after" story with her long-time friend and new husband, Heck (Goode). Her life becomes instantly complicated when, as she makes her way down the aisle toward wedded bliss, she exchanges a brief but electric glance with Luce (Headey), the woman who is supplying the flowers for the event. After the wedding, their lives slowly intertwine and, as her marriage falters, Rachel's infatuation with Luce grows. Rachel fights her feelings by trying to inject some steam into her married life but, when that fails, she finally gives in to "true love" and takes up with Luce.

Just as that love relationship begins, however, Rachel overhears Heck wax poetic to Luce over how he's failed Rachel and how the problems in their marriage are all his fault. Guilt-ridden, Luce ends the relationship with Rachel. Guilt-ridden too, Rachel tells Heck that she's had a brief affair (leaving out the fact that Luce is her lover) in hopes of coming clean and starting anew. Heck can't handle the news and leaves. Suddenly free to pursue her heart, Rachel runs to Luce who, in despair at the loss of her one true love, has already left for an extended vacation. Will Rachel catch Luce before she flies away? Will everything end happy (at least for Luce and Rachel)?

It's a fairly standard romcom story. It comes complete with the cranky parents whose relationship needs mending, the womanizing best friend who turns out to have a heart of gold and a soft spot for marital bliss and the cute little sister who tends to offer just the right innocent question at just the right time to help the characters along.

Parker chooses not to confront, in any meaningful way, the challenges that are likely to arise when a young married woman suddenly announces to her friends and family that she is turning her back on her husband and the comfortable life he represents for a same-sex relationship with a woman she has known for a very short time. Sure, Rachel's mother objects to her sudden apparent change in sexual orientation but her mother is such an unhappy character that her concerns are lost in a sea of misery that is her life. Maybe it's good that popular cinema has progressed to the point where it can now present a same-sex relationship without batting an eyelash but the film's climax might have been stronger, with more at stake, if the viewer felt that Rachel risked losing at least some of her friends and family by pursuing true love with Luce at the expense of Heck and her marriage.

The performances are good: Perabo is cute and sweet and happy at all the right times and does a fairly nice job of conveying the conflict she feels as she discovers that her comfortable existence with Heck is not, in fact, true love but merely a strong friendship; Headey is very good as the uncompromising Luce, doing a nice job in keeping Luce human and loving while avoiding the pop-culture tendency of portraying gay and lesbian characters as mere cliches rather than fully-rounded human beings; and Goode is as flat and boring as he needs to be to help us understand, in such a short film, what is missing from Rachel's life.

The direction is not bad. There's nothing really fresh or new here; in general, Paker just stays out of the way and lets the story and acting hold the spotlight.

Unfortunately, one of the real weaknesses of the film is that it offers very little that is new:

• Rachel's parents have been lifted straight out of Wimbeldon;
• Rachel's friend who claims she was promised that being a bridesmaid meant she was guaranteed sex (only to be disappointed) is a pale shadow of the same character from Four Weddings and Funeral;
• the little sister is an amalgam of every child that ever appeared in a romcom, meaning she is a far cry from the complex and complicated young son of the Liam Neeson character in Love Actually;
• the womanizing best friend (played quite nicely by Darren Boyd) is the reincarnation of Paul's cousin Ira from the TV sitcom Mad About You; and
• the dialogue about the possibility of love at first sight, the thought that true love is marked by a "thunderbolt" moment, was done far better in Four Weddings than it is here.

As all romcoms inevitably are, however, Imagine Me & You will be judged on the effectiveness of its rising action and climax. Let's face it: no matter how strong the characters, no matter how intricate the plot, no matter how good the performances, if the ending isn't gripping and, finally, completely gratifying, the movie doesn't work. See, for example, Must Love Dogs, a pretty good movie that falls to pieces because of a terrible final act.

For that final act to be effective, it must be filled with tension. The stakes must be extremely high — the future of the romance must truly and irrevocably hang in the balance. When done best, the risk to the relationship must come, not so much from circumstances, but from within the characters themselves. The main character must put him- or herself entirely on the line, preferably in a very public way, must risk everything in order to try to save the relationship. And as the main character puts herself out there, the viewer must recognise that the other character has good reasons, plausible, justifiable, understandable, for saying no, for turning her back on the main character and the love she offers. There must be risk on both sides and sacrifice too.

The best ending I've ever seen takes place in Notting Hill, where Anna comes to William to ask, humbly and in a very vulnerable way, for the chance to earn his love again. William, already emotionally battered, instead responds rationally and refuses her request, intent on saving himself further pain. Knowing that she has wasted her one chance at true love, Anna smiles through her disappointment, kisses him on the cheek while whispering "good decision, good decision" and walks out of his life forever.

The film could have ended there and been emotionally satisfying (and, of course, devastating as well) for the viewer. Anna took the risk, allowed herself to be emotionally vulnerable in her effort to save the relationship, and William quite properly refused.

But William is an eternal optimist. It's not in his nature to turn his back on the the possibility of true love. After consulting his friends, he rushes into downtown London intent on finding Anna and attempting to undo the pain his rejection has now caused her. He finds out she's heading back to America immediately following one last press conference. His only chance to see her, to try to set things right, will take place in front of hundreds of reporters with their cameras literally rolling.

It's a beautifully filmed, perfectly acted scene of emotional risk on the parts of both main characters. William must somehow communicate to Anna that he was wrong to reject her, that he is willing to take a chance on their relationship, all with the reporters hanging on his every word, not knowing who he is. Anna must, under those difficult circumstances, first understand his message, then consider whether or not she can put aside the hurt and humiliation his recent rejection has caused her and trust him again, then communicate her own response back to him, once again with the fourth estate listening closely.

The viewer knows that everything hangs on this single moment. We recognise the hurt each character has endured and the risks they have both taken in an effort to save the relationship. The viewer wants them to succeed but would understand completely if either one decided, no, the risk and the pain are too much. So when William asks Anna, in coded language, whether she would reconsider, we know what's at stake and we care deeply about the response. And when Anna says, quietly, almost shyly, her face betraying the emotions she is feeling, "Yes, I believe I would", we recognise the risk each has taken and the reward each has won. And we are completely and utterly satisfied.

I just don't feel that Imagine Me & You succeeds in the end. I liked the characters and hoped they'd wind up together. But there was no real tension in the ending. The fact of the matter is, there isn't that much at stake. Luce had stated her love for Rachel and ended the relationship only because she did not want to interfere in Rachel's marriage with Heck. Rachel has already declared her love for Luce and allowed her relationship with Heck to end, thus removing the final barrier keeping her and Luce apart. The only step that remains is communicating that fact to Luce, who is in a taxi heading out of town. What's at stake? In the end, there is no real risk to either. It's a foregone conclusion that, once Rachel gets it across to Luce that her marriage is over, they will end up together, even if Luce does manage to leave town for a couple of months.

No matter what Parker does to try to ramp things up (and I would argue his efforts are ineffective) the simple fact of the matter is — there is no tension left to play out. There is no reason for Luce to reject Rachel at this point and no chance that she will. The climax of the movie is, in fact, the confrontation between Rachel and Heck, the moment where we wonder if Heck will decide to stay in the marriage despite Rachel's indiscretion or end it, thus setting Rachel free to pursue true love. And that scene is so remarkably underplayed and undervalued by the writer/director that it comes and goes almost without notice. Whatever tension the viewer might have felt is left completely untapped.

All of that being said, Imagine Me & You is still a decent little movie. I know, I know. I'm a sucker for romcoms. I think Perabo and Headey have a nice chemistry so I'm willing to like this film. It's no Kissing Jessica Stein, to be sure, but it's still a pretty good deal for $5.

Tags: Romantic comedy, Piper Perabo