Considering that this
is Michael Brandman's second outing with Robert B Parker's Jesse
Stone, it was bold to title the novel Fool Me Twice. But if anything,
Brandman is making Stone his character, not Parker's. As I mentioned
when I reviewed his first Stone novel, Killing The Blues (you can
link to that review here), Brandman's Stone is more of a loner, more
aggressive, and somewhat darker than Parker's Stone was. Parker could
make Stone's sometimes flippant attitude work because he was a master
of quick scenes and sharp patter, he also delineated supporting
characters quickly and with far more efficiency than Brandman's able
to do.
Instead, Brandman has
blended together three stories, and in each of them Stone is able to
crack wise with pompous figures of authority. A movie production has
come to town, and the leading lady fears she's being stalked by her
soon-to-be-ex husband. A spoiled teenaged girl is driving while using
her mobile and Jesse, as is his wont, takes her on as a personal
project (though he never refers her to a shrink, as Parker's Jesse
might have). And most bizarrely, what starts out as a nuisance call
from an old busybody, about her water bills getting bigger, turns
into something far more complicated. The stories don't cross over,
but their concerns reinforce each other to some extent, keeping the
plotlines going. And of course there is
a bit of romance for Stone, but this Stone has no pesky ex-wife haunting him, no Sunny Parker either, and we quickly learn that the last novel's entanglement has disappeared.
Jesse has always been
Parker's most problematic lead character—he's Spenser in many ways,
but with more id and less ego (or super ego), and more of a lone
wolf. Spenser kept him entertaining with his baseball past, his
drinking, and his multi-layered problems with the opposite sex, but
Brandman has eliminated most of that, and Jesse's sessions with his
shrink. He's gained a more forward-driven plot, but lost some of the
relative complexity of the character, and in terms of women, frankly,
turned him into Tom Selleck on TV.
Here he brings back
Parker's Crow, a figure much like Spenser's Hawk, only without the
repartee. Crow was more a construct than a character, and his
backstory with Jesse's deputy Molly is ignored, partly because Molly
has become a different sort of character too. Crow doesn't do much
except play his part in the plotline, which is OK since he'snot very
interesting, but with the state cop Healy rendered one-dimensional as
well, it leaves only Jesse and his verbal sparring partners as
characters.
Taking over someone
else's character is a thankless task. Stick too close to the
established formula and you're riding coattails, change it and you're
messing with the master. I wrote about this with Don Winslow's taking
over Trevanian (link here), but it seems to me that what Brandman is
trying to do is gently make this Stone his own, or better, the Stone
who was already there in the TV movies which he and Parker
collaborated on. It's not a bad way to proceed, but he needs to go
all the way, and fill in the missing blanks of character around Stone
to really make it work.
Fool Me Twice by
Michael Brandman
Quercus £18.99 ISBN
9781782064763
NOTE: This review will also appear at Crime Time (www.crimetime.co.uk)
No comments :
Post a Comment