The Bitterest Pill

July 1, 2019
The new generation of drugs comes to Paradise. Until the day Heather Mackey took a lethal overdose of what turns out to be Fentanyl-enhanced heroin, everybody would have sworn the 17-year-old cheerleader was a logical candidate for Miss Massachusetts. Now her father, Paradise Selectman Steve Mackey, is uncharacteristically distraught; her mother, Patti Mackey, is beside herself; and even Chris Grimm, the fellow Paradise High student who sold her the fatal dose, is inconsolable. Not that anybody's looking to console him. Soon after Police Chief Jesse Stone (Robert B. Parker's Colorblind, 2018, etc.) notices the kid moping outside Heather's viewing, Chris is whisked away by his supplier, Arakel Sarkassian, who ends up executing him to save him from more of the torture administered by Arakel's sadistic underlings, who start their work convinced Chris has important information to share and end up not caring one way or the other. Jesse, who's drifted into a casual but sweet affair with the local painter Maryglenn McCombs, follows his generally infallible instincts, which lead him to Heather's friends and the staff of Paradise High, from new principal Virginia Wester on down. Not surprisingly, though, the scourge of opioids reaches far outside the schoolyard, and most of the victims of the bloodbath that ensues haven't set foot in a classroom for quite a while. The most notable exception is a teacher who recruits new dealers from among the student body by seducing them--a teacher whose identity is the only big secret left for the climactic reveal, a disappointingly weightless one. Another highly professional canter around a familiar track that's less mysterious than just plain sad.

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Starred review from July 8, 2019
Bestseller Coleman’s exceptional sixth Jesse Stone novel finds Jesse, the police chief of Paradise, Mass., still adjusting to the revelation in 2018’s Colorblind that he fathered a now adult son, Cole Slayton. Cole’s arrival in town comes “just as Paradise was shedding its own skin” and becoming more like Boston, complete with big-city crime, including narcotics. That plague hits home when 17-year-old Heather Mackey is found dead in her bedroom after overdosing on heroin and fentanyl. Concerned over the prospect of more deaths, Jesse devotes himself to finding Heather’s supplier and those higher up in the distribution chain. Coleman sustains suspense through chapters told from the perspective of the drug dealers, while withholding the identity of a key member of the drug chain, who has a link with Heather’s high school. Developments in Jesse’s personal life are effectively interwoven with the mystery plot. Coleman stays faithful to the spirit of Parker’s characters without sticking to the status quo. Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners.

August 1, 2019
Heather Mackey is an elite student and a cheerleader. She has a great future ahead of her, until she doesn't, thanks to a heroin overdose. Jesse Stone, Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief, is a former L.A. cop who knows that kids don't usually jump right into heroin. Jesse starts digging at the high school and finds that Heather's grades had been declining, and she had lost her spark since suffering a back injury the year before. It's the first in what Jesse learns is a disturbing pattern: painful injuries followed by opioid addiction and then the reliance on illegal street drugs. The local supplier is a classmate of Heather's, but in short order he's found murdered. Jesse sets out to move up the supply chain. The sixth novel by Coleman in the Jesse Stone series, based on characters created by Robert B. Parker, may be his best. The appeal of the series has always been the unique buzz of small-town crime; in recent episodes, Coleman sometimes left that behind for more spectacular, cinematic violence. Happily, Stone's small-town dynamic is back.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2019

In this latest from the three-time Shamus Award winner, the opioid epidemic crashes into the placid town of Paradise with a cheerleader's probable death from overdose, and Police Chief Jesse Stone must wrestle with on-edge teachers and administrators, students and parents to get at the truth.

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