Review of Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost

I've read the books by Robert Parker and Paradise is filled with creepy, gloomy characters, so all the movies are certainly spot on. I can get past the cryptic and stilted dialog in the books because I'm curious to see how the plot plays out but for some reason, the dour characters become tedious when you have to actually watch them glumly interact with each other. It's also highly annoying to listen to the cast beat to death the 'it's a small town' gag from beginning to end. I was amazed to see that even the dog looked like a miserable wretch. Tortured characters are always a great hook in both books and movies but there is such a thing as beating a premise to death and Mister Parker is no slouch in this department. The writers, directors and producers of the series of movies would have been prudent to dial back most of the author's character idiosyncrasies because they're more irritating than compelling.