Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot

July 7, 2014
Shamus Award winner Coleman, best known for his Moe Prager series (The Hollow Girl, etc.), successfully emulates the tone and style of the late Robert B. Parker’s nine Jesse Stone novels, though readers should be prepared for a cookie-cutter crime thriller with some additional backstory. Stone once hoped to play major league baseball until an accident ended his dream. Now Vic Prado, the Triple-A teammate whose throw led to Stone’s injuries, has convened a team reunion in New York City. Stone is disturbed to hear that Prado may have made the throw on purpose, but before he can probe the truth of that claim, he must rush home to Paradise, Mass., where a gunman has abducted Benjamin Salter, a wealthy college kid, and shot the boy’s girlfriend. Stone takes the law into his own hands as necessary, but is surprisingly blasé when a bad decision leads to a serious assault. Agent: Helen Brann, Helen Brann Agency.

July 15, 2014
Coleman (The Hollow Girl, 2014, etc.) follows MichaelBrandman (Robert B. Parker's Damned If You Do, 2013, etc.) into the Jesse Stone franchise, withresults that couldn't be more different.Before Jesse Stone was police chiefof Paradise, Massachusetts, or put in his time on the LAPD, he was a shortstopwith the Albuquerque Dukes, the Dodgers' Triple A club, his dreams ofbig-league glory canceled when a double-play ball relayed by second baseman VicPrado and a runner's hard slide into second took out his shoulder for good. NowPrado, of all people, is hosting a Dukes reunion in New York that Jesse feelshonor-bound to attend. He's never been close to the golden boy who stole his girlfriendKayla, married her, became a major league All Star and retired to become awealthy venture capitalist, and he has no idea Prado organized this event justso he could involve Jesse in his latest venture. Although Jesse does take thetime to bed Kayla's friend Dee Harrington, Prado's scheme to rope him in nevergets off the ground because Jesse has to scuttle back home to investigate themurder of Tufts student Martina Penworth, 18, and the disappearance of herboyfriend, Benjamin Salter, the only suspect. He has no idea that the crimes inhis backyard are as closely linked to Prado as his failure to make it to themajors. Meanwhile, Prado's mobbed-up colleagues decide they overreached inkidnapping Ben Salter to bend his father, Harlan Salter IV, to their will andoffer to make peace by withdrawing the demand they'd made on him. Dad has otherideas. If this all sounds more like Coleman than Parker, wait till you hear thedialogue. More densely and diffusely plottedand less punchy than its original, with characters who often speak in completesentences.If the Parker estate keeps pouring new wine into old bottles, who'llbe the next vintner? Mary Higgins Clark? Andrew Vachss? Janet Evanovich?

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August 1, 2014
A young college girl is murdered in the Paradise, Massachusetts, summer home of one of the profoundly wealthy one-percenters. The victim's boyfriend, Ben Salter, heir to the fortune, is missing, apparently kidnapped. When the crime is reported, Paradise police chief Jesse Stone is out of town attending the reunion of a minor-league baseball team. The reunion and the murder seem completely unrelated but become tenuously linked when a man resembling the reunion organizer, Vic Prado, is seen meeting with the kidnapped boy's father. The cast of characters expands to Prado's wife (an old girlfriend of Jesse's), a sexy FBI agent who falls for Jesse, a psychotic hit man known as Mr. Peepers, and various mobsters. Michael Brandman wrote the first three Jesse Stone novels after Parker's death and did a wonderful job of capturing the melancholy tone and spare writing style favored by Parker. Coleman keeps the characters and the somber atmosphere but makes the book his own stylistically. Readers anticipating a Jesse Stone novel will need to adjust. This is a Reed Farrel Coleman novel (not a bad thing, by any means), and Jesse and the Paradise crew are merely characters he borrows.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2014

A murder back home in Paradise, MA, cuts short police chief Jesse Stone's trip to his minor league baseball team reunion in New York City, organized by his former roommate Vic Prado. Ben Salter, son of a wealthy local investment banker is missing after the murder of his girlfriend; Ben is an unlikely suspect. Assuming Ben was kidnapped but puzzled by the lack of a ransom note, Jesse believes the elder Salter knows more than he is revealing. Oddly, Vic, his wife, Kayla (Jesse's former girlfriend in the baseball days), and Kayla's friend Dee also travel to Paradise. While Jesse and Dee fell for each other in New York, in Paradise, he senses she is hiding something. VERDICT Fans of both Parker's Spenser and Jesse Stone series will enjoy this 13th installment, after Damned If You Do. Like Spenser, Jesse is a man of honor who feels he must speak for the dead. Coleman's (The Hollow Girl) writing mimics Parker's, with short chapters, snappy repartee, and just enough action. While the ending seems hastily put together, it is undoubtedly set up for another book. Like all Parker novels, it is a great, fast beach read, recommended for all detective fiction fans. [See Prepub Alert, 3/10/14.]--Edward Goldberg, Syosset P.L., NY

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2014

Called the noir poet laureate by the Huffington Post, Coleman takes the late Robert B. Parker's Police Chief Jesse Stone for his 13th outing, this time for a reunion of the Triple-A team he left behind when an injury ended his baseball career. But the reunion goes bad when a young woman is found murdered, her boyfriend is presumed kidnapped, and Jesse sees a former teammate as the main suspect.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.