High Profile (Jesse Stone #6) by Robert B. Parker

High Profile is the 6th novel in the Jesse Stone series, which is about a police chief in Paradise, Massachusetts. Tom Selleck plays Jesse Stone is in a number of TV movies, which I haven’t seen yet.

In High Profile, the body of a controversial talk-show host, Walton Weeks, is discovered hanging from a tree on the outskirts of Paradise. The case is very high profile and Stone is under a lot of pressure to either solve the case or pass it off to higher officials. There is also more stuff about Jesse’s personal life with his ex-wife, Jenn, and honestly I couldn’t care less at this point.

I mostly enjoy the Jesse Stone series, with the exception of the relationship between Jesse and Jenn. Their relationship takes up around 40% of the novel, which ends up making the novel a whole lot quicker to read since I skip those chapters.

In summary, Jesse and Jenn both admit (I think around book 2) that they are bad for each other and shouldn’t be with each other. They also admit (again at book 2) that they can’t give each other up and will always love each other. This gives the reader an endless cycle of should they, shouldn’t they and both Jesse and Jenn get jealous when the other one is with someone else which is pretty much every book. After book 6, I’m ready for Jenn to die or move somewhere far away where they can no longer communicate.

That’s my rant and now I’ll move onto the better parts of the novel.

I enjoy how simple the novel is and how the reader feel like they are with Jesse solving the murder. There are a number of suspects in this novel and even though it could of been said that the killer was obvious, I didn’t see it coming.

I also like all of the characters in the novels (but not Jenn and whoever Jesse is dating). I love the banter between Jesse and Molly and Jesse and Suitcase, who both work with Jesse. You can tell that they all care about their jobs and solving murders, but also know that they can allow for some humour and fun in the workplace.

While writing this review, I realized that I enjoy reading the series, but I don’t like most of the books and I end up not reading half the book. For those reasons, I’m going to take a break from the series and possibly watch the TV movies.

2 calculators out of a possible 5. I liked the mystery of the death of the talk show host, however it was overshadowed by the mess that is Jesse and Jenn.