![\"Parker](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Parker-Lullaby-Atkins.jpg?resize=135%2C206&ssl=1\")
<\/a>In my opinion, Ace Atkins can. He picked up Spencer in Robert B. Parker’s <\/em>Lullaby<\/em><\/a> and ran with him through four more books, all of which have the snappy dialogue, moral quagmires, and occasional brute force that a reader could hope for. The style may not be identical, but it doesn\u2019t have to be—Mr. Atkin\u2019s isn\u2019t ghostwriting for Robert B. Parker, he\u2019s honoring him.<\/p>\nPart of my troubles with Robert B. Parker\u2019s Fool Me Twice<\/em><\/a>, by Michael Brandman, might be because I listened to the audiobook<\/a> first. No matter how talented a voice actor is (and James Naughton is very talented), if the reading doesn\u2019t match how my beloved characters sound in my mind\u2019s ear—and I\u2019ve had years to fix these voices the way I want them—I have trouble getting past how things are said to pay enough attention to what things are being said.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a fair assessment of Mr. Brandman’s writing, so I tried it in print . . . and still didn\u2019t care for it.<\/p>\n I know that these books aren\u2019t going to be perfect—every writer will bring a different style to the same story, even Ace Atkins. But while I think the styles of Mr. Atkins and Mr. Parker mesh well, the style that Mr. Brandman brings is too far off what I expect from a Jess Stone novel. The dialogue is excellent, but there\u2019s too much omniscient narration and parts of it—particularly the sections that aren’t from Jesse’s point of view—read more like background notes than a story. The bare bones of the plot are intriguing . . . but that\u2019s what the whole book seems like to me: bare bones.<\/p>\n Or maybe I just miss Mr. Parker too much to enjoy Jesse Stone’s adventures without him.<\/p>\n Will I give a different author’s Jesse book a try? Sure.<\/p>\n But this time, I\u2019ll read it in print first.<\/p>\n Do you think a book series should outlive its author?<\/em><\/p>\n Do you enjoy the post-Parker Spencer or Jesse Stone novels?<\/em><\/p>\n Can you recommend a post-Parker Jesse Stone novel you really enjoyed?<\/em><\/p>\n Did you love <\/em>Fool Me Twice?\u00a0 Please let me know why in the comments—I’m willing to be convinced!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love Robert B. Parker\u2019s mysteries. I\u2019m a big fan of both Spencer, his Boston boxer-detective, and Jesse Stone, his laconic small town police chief. So when Mr. Parker passed away in 2010, I mourned not only one of my favorite authors, but Spencer and Jesse (and Hawk and Sally[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[361,10],"tags":[2997,360,617,528,2996,952,2993,2994,2995],"class_list":["post-24516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-books","tag-ace-atkins","tag-audiobook","tag-audiobooks","tag-book-reviews","tag-michael-brandman","tag-review","tag-robert-b-parker","tag-robert-b-parkers-lullaby","tag-robert-b-parkers-fool-me-twice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-6nq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24516"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24547,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24516\/revisions\/24547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fool](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Fool-Me-Twice-Brandman.jpg?resize=138%2C208&ssl=1\")
<\/a>I wish I could say I liked the Jesse Stone books as much, or at least the first one I’ve tried. Unlike the Spencer series, each of these new mysteries was written by a different author\u2014I don\u2019t know whether that was the publisher\u2019s idea or the authors declined to pick up the series in favor of their own characters, or if the publisher hasn\u2019t found the right fit yet.<\/p>\n