Robert B. Parker's Fallout, Mike Lupica

In 2020, Mike Lupica took over a second Robert B. Parker franchise, Paradise, Mass. police chief Jesse Stone. Stone had experienced the most variation over the years since series creator Parker died in 2010, and Lupica was the third author for the character and cast. His first outing was strong, but he faded in 2010's Stone's Throw. The fading continues in Fallout.

Luther "Suitcase" Simpson is one of Jesse's best officers, but he is devastated when his nephew, a star ballplayer, is found dead at the bottom of a bluff. The death has no real signs of foul play, but the young man had a bright future and seemed very level-headed. Jesse believes there's something more than meets the eye.

Then Jesse's predecessor as Paradise police chief, Charlie Farrell, tells Jesse that he's been tracking spam calls that prey on the elderly to defraud them of their money. He thinks he has a lead, but then Charlie is found murdered too. Jesse very much wants to find out what Charlie's lead was and who killed him, while Suitcase and Jesse's assistant chief, Molly Crane, begin to dig into the onion of high school life. But as they try to un-spin the different webs of mystery, they may find them rewoven and ensnaring the three officers themselves.

During much of the late '90s and early ’00s Parker's work was not much more than a cut and paste version of his old self. A reader might wade through a swamp of clever badinage and sangfroidy quips, cameos and walk-ons by previous Parker characters for no real reason whatsoever, scenes and even chapters that had no point. Why? Who knows. Maybe some sense of loyalty to the author himself, a kind of thank-you for some of the absolute gems from earlier in his career. Maybe because of a stubborn belief that at some point, some real thoughts and real insight might coalesce once again from the fog and the half-ass effort in your hands might become something real (Painted Ladies in the Spenser series is a good example of the latter).

Lupica does most of these things in Fallout. There are walk-ons from state police retiree Healy, gangster and pimp Tony Marcus, Jessie's former flame Sunny Randall's former husband Richie Burke, and so on. There is an inexplicable use of Wilson "Crow" Cromartie, a pseudo-Hawk to Jesse's Spenser, and yet another few scenes of Molly Crane desiring Cromartie even though it's already wrecked her marriage, completely implausible connections between events, a girlfriend Jesse kind of likes but will gently move on down the road, and so on.

We would put up with this, more or less, when Parker did it. We were doing it, in a sense, for Parker, for any or all of the reasons above. But as Fallout drags on and on, the reader becomes aware that he or she is making this slog not for Parker, but for Mike Lupica. And there doesn't seem much point to that.