47. Night and Day by Robert B. Parker

Jesse Stone #8
Listened in the car returning from the east coast to Tucson
2009, Putnam
289 pgs.
Adult Mystery
Finished 9/5/16
Goodreads rating:  3.91 - 4,621 ratings
My rating: 3/5
Setting: Contemporary Paradise, MA

First line/s:  "Jesse Stone sat in his office at the Paradise police station, looking at the sign painted on the pebbled-glass window of his office door."

My comments:  A short, simple story that isn't so much mystery as it is a study of characters, personalities, and situations.  It includes a high school principal checking her female student's underwear, a peeping Tom, a swinger's club, and the thought processes that Stone goes through as his ex-wife, Jen, leaves him once again.  Perfect easy listening for the first five hours of my road trip. James Naughton read it perfectly, and I pictured Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone throughout.  A TV show in my head, as the miles progressed....

Goodreads synopsis:  Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief Jesse Stone confronts a town’s darkest secrets in the shocking new novel from the New York Times–bestselling author and “America’s greatest mystery writer” (The New York Sun).
          Things are getting strange in Paradise, Massachusetts. Police Chief Jesse Stone is called to the junior high school when reports of lewd conduct by the school’s principal, Betsy Ingersoll, filter into the station. Ingersoll claims she was protecting the propriety of her students when she inspected each girl’s undergarments in the locker room. Jesse would like nothing more than to see Ingersoll punished, but her high-powered attorney husband stands in the way. At the same time, the women of Paradise are faced with a threat to their sense of security with the emergence of a tormented voyeur, dubbed “The Night Hawk.” Initially, he’s content to peer through windows, but as times goes on, he becomes more reckless, forcing his victims to strip at gunpoint, then photographing them at their most vulnerable. And according to the notes he’s sending to Jesse, he’s not satisfied to stop there. It’s up to Jesse to catch the Night Hawk, before it’s too late.