text: One of the Spotlight Reviewers says that by combining two great characters--Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone--Robert B. Parker has doubled our fun.
  
  Quite the reverse.
  
  He has cut it in half.
  
  The characterizations of Sunny and Jesse are enormously feeble; and the the rest of the characters are no great shakes, either.
  
  Sunny's Irish Mafia uncle is a cardboard cutout.  Suitcase Simpson has three funny lines and is heard from no more.  The villains--Buddy, Erin, Missy, Gerard, Moon--are little more than vague names and stereotyping.  Spike is relegated to a scene and a half.
  
  Oddly, the only interesting character is a very minor one: Eddie.  But he only stays around for 10 minutes
  
  Even the plot is tissue-thin.
  
  The love-story is lame; the sex-scenes boring.
  
  Worst of all, who should appear but (Christ!) Susan Silverman, from the Spenser series: one of the dampest and most wooden and least interesting characters in fiction.
  
  As with "Cold Service" and some others, Parker is just coasting with this one.
  
  He is capable of far better.
  
  