Slowly, subtly and surely, Reed Farrel Coleman has made this series his own. In the process, he has broadened and deepened characterizations, enriched plots, and improved an already fine series. I look forward to keeping up with Jesse Stone and the Paradise Police Department.

Synopsis: 'Jesse Stone is back on the job after a stint in rehab, and the road to recovery is immediately made bumpy by a series of disturbing and apparently racially motivated crimes, beginning with the murder of an African American woman. Then, Jesse's own deputy Alisha—the first black woman hired by the Paradise police force—becomes the target of a sophisticated frame-up. As he and his team work tirelessly to unravel the truth, he has to wonder if this is just one part of an even grander plot, one with an end game more destructive than any of them can imagine.
At the same time, a mysterious young man named Cole Slayton rolls into town with a chip on his shoulder and a problem with authority--namely, Jesse. Yet, something about the angry twenty-something appeals to Jesse, and he takes Cole under his wing. But there's more to him than meets the eye, and his secrets might change Jesse's life forever.' From author website.

Review: Fairly obvious who Cole is and why he's in town. Glad the skin-heads got theirs. ( )

Alcohol rehab and slow incomplete recovery for Jesse; white supremecist plot, murders, and attempted group murder thwarted by Jesse and colleagues. ( )

Reed Farrel Coleman can write crime stories. But his handling of Parker's series had been somewhat of a disaster. Part of what made all of Parker's stories work was his spare style and the connections between the books, some of them spanning decades. When this series started, it got some of the rogue gallery of Spenser - and worked with it successfully - allowing for continuity... which somehow got lost. At least this time Coleman did not manage to get the continuity wrong - the previous novel attempted to create a better connection in the shared universe and bungled it...

Jesse is back from rehab and before he had managed to settle back a few attacks on mixed-race couples happen and then a young man is killed by one of his police officers. Reading this is 2021, one would think that Coleman went for the low-hanging fruit... except that the police officer was Alisha, the only non-white person in the police force and the killed man was the son of the leader of one of the better known neo-Nazi organizations in the state. But regardless of who was who - Alisha had been drinking, no gun was found on the boy... and things look really bad.

And in addition to that, another boy shows up from LA - Cole - who seems to have something against Jesse.

So here we are - one live boy, one dead one, one police officer in disgrace and Paradise on the verge of explosion - because both the neo-Nazis and the advocates for Alisha show up in numbers...

Coleman shows the reader what really happens early on so Jesse is the one that needs to figure out what exactly happened and how the shooting happened. And he does - with the help of both new and old friends. That part of the novel works. The one that does not is Cole's story. It took Jesse the whole novel to finally figure out who he was... when it was screaming from the page from early on.

If you had been reading the series, read this one... and hope that the next one will be better. If you had not, don't start here... ( )

Jesse Stone is back from rehab. Recovery is not an easy road, but being confronted with a racially motivated crime makes it even harder. A black woman is found severely beaten and close to death on the beach. There is also something about the crime that calls back to another crime similar to this one.

Immediately after this, an inter-racial family experiences a cross burning in their front yard. Something they wish not to become widely known for fear of what their children would have to endure at school.

The third event is when Alisha, the black female deputy Jesse hired, is involved in a shooting. The victim is white, there is no weapon found on him and Alisha had answered a problematic call some time before.

Are these three incidents happening close together coincidental? Jesse doesn’t think so. To him, they are related, but finding the connecting thread is difficult. The puppeteer is hiding in the shadows.

On top of this, a young man shows up in town and is a bit of a mystery to Jesse. Why is he here? What is the story behind a photograph the young man has? Why does he seem angry? Can it have anything to do with Jesse?

The pace moves fairly fast, the threads are pretty tangled but tantalizing close to being unravel-able. Another enjoyable read in the Jesse Stone series. ( )