Note: I’m going to change it up a bit and review an entire series. I haven’t completed the whole series yet (there are 20 books thus far, and counting), but I think I can give a pretty solid review at this point.
Summary: Stone Barrington starts out as a beat cop, and this series follows the end of his police career and his retirement due to disability, followed by his next career as a lawyer and private investigator.
Setting: Late 1990’s through present day
Plot: Stone and his partner Dino are beat cops and Stone is shot in the knee, ending his career with the NYPD. Dino continues progressing in the NYPD, and makes his way up to Detective and beyond, while Stone passes the bar, having graduated from law school prior to becoming a cop. Stone is recruited to work with (but not at) a prestigious local firm, taking cases that their firm can’t be associated with for whatever reason. His practice ends up being quite successful, from 3 (thus far in the series) major sources:
- One of his ex-girlfriends ends up marrying a famous actor, and Stone is asked to help when things go wrong for them or their friends.
- The law firm that he’s associated with drops cases from extremely high profile clients into his lap, but these are the kinds of cases that the firm can’t be connected to – a CEO’s son is accused of date rape, etc.
- Stone’s ex-partner (and current best friend) Dino is married to the daughter of a very successful Italian businessman, and Eduardo (Dino’s father-in-law) asks Stone for assistance with legal and investigative matters.
All of Stone’s clients are very well off and as a result, Stone makes quite a bit of money, and has gotten quite affluent over the course of the series, flying on private jets, staying in villas and the best hotels, and driving dream cars.
Criticisms: Some of the language is quite profane, and some of the situations that Stone finds himself thrown into can seem a bit contrived, but as a whole, the books are fairly solid and tie the series together quite competently.
Wrap-up: It’s a pleasure to be able to follow a character’s career from the very beginning. There’s enough meat to the stories that none of the books seem to be “disposable”, but I can tell you from experience that if you read one of the stories from anywhere in the series, it’s quite capable of standing alone. As a result, you can take small bites from this story without having to read the entire series start to finish, or you can take a deep breath and dive right in at the beginning.
Woods has a couple of other series that he writes as well, and to be honest, I’m not certain if this series is his main series or not, but he’s quite prolific. The series seems to be quite consistent in writing style from the start to where I’m at in the series (in book 7), so I get the feeling that he’s been doing this for a while; this probably ain’t his first rodeo. Pretty solid series.
Grade: By my arbitrary scale, I give this series (and all the books I’ve read in it thus far) a solid B+.
