Robert B. Parker's Colorblind

Police chief Jesse Stone tackles a disturbing case that hits right at the heart of the Paradise police force.\n\nJesse 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.\n\nAt 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.\n\nEditorial Reviews\n\nPraise for Robert B. Parker's Colorblind\n\n"Superior...Coleman makes the impact of these events on individuals palpable, giving this nuanced entry more emotional weight."--Publishers Weekly\n\n"Colorblind represents a further advance in Coleman's effort to make this series his own...The result is another well-written, fast-paced yarn from one of the acknowledged masters of crime fiction."--Associated Press\n\nPraise for the Robert B. Parker novels by Reed Farrel Coleman\n\n"Coleman's fourth Jesse Stone novel is easily his best. It features a clever plot and finds Jesse confronting some very real inner demons. Best of all, it brings together three of Robert B. Parker's much-loved characters. Must reading for Parker devotees."--Booklist (starred review)\n\n"Coleman deftly captures the nuances of this character....[He] skillfully keeps Stone on the track that Parker set, while also adding his own touches to the character and the story."--Oline Cogdill for SouthFlorida.com\n- From the Publisher\n\n07/09/2018\nEdgar-finalist Coleman's superior fifth Jesse Stone novel (after 2017's The Hangman's Sonnet) finds the police chief of Paradise, Mass., back on duty after two months in rehab to try to stay sober. His return coincides with a series of hate crimes, starting with the vicious beating of an African-American woman, Felicity Wileford. That her attacker wrote the word slut on her belly in lipstick suggests a connection with the first murder Stone ever handled in Paradise. A cross burning on the lawn of a mixed-race couple follows, and a group calling itself the Saviors of Society circulates flyers calling for Paradise's citizens to revolt and take back their community from the pernicious forces that have invaded it. The situation gets even more flammable when one of Stone's officers, Alisha Davis, who's African-American, guns down an apparently unarmed white man. Coleman makes the impact of these events on individuals palpable, giving this nuanced entry more emotional weight than most Spenser books. Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. (Sept.)\n- Publishers Weekly\n\n2018-05-28\nSwearing that he's taken his last drink, alcoholic Paradise police chief Jesse Stone returns from the two months in rehab that followed his traumatic last case (Robert B. Parker's The Hangman's Sonnet, 2017) to battle a white supremacist and investigate an assault that looks uncomfortably familiar.The festivities welcoming Jesse back range from the wary greetings of Officer Molly Crane, who never wanted to serve as acting chief, to the skulking of Cole Slayton, whose gallons of attitude make no secret of why he's been tossed in jail as drunk and disorderly. But Jesse's most immediate problem concerns African-American Harvard doctoral student Felicity Wileford, who's been beaten and raped in an assault that looks sadly reminiscent of Jesse's first murder case in Paradise nearly 20 years ago. The burning of a cross outside Jesse's old house, now home to Boston physician Ron Patel and his blonde wife, Liza, makes Jesse wonder if someone isn't specifically targeting interracial couples for harassment--a suspicion that's intensified by the appearance of a bunch of leaflets from a white supremacist group calling itself the Saviors of Society (the SS for short, in case you miss the point). Jesse and his department quickly lean on witnesses who might be more than witnesses, but Leon Oskar Vandercamp, the self-styled Colonel behind the SS, is equally efficient about getting a long-unidentified soldier who works for him to tie up every loose end with extreme prejudice. The plot thickens when Alisha Davis, the first African-American woman on Jesse's police force, is lured into pursuing a fleeing suspect into a blind alley from which she emerges accused by the authorities of an unjustified shooting and by the Colonel and his creatures of inciting the very same racial hatred that's clearly been directed against her."Never thought we'd get this kind of thing come into Paradise," sagely opines a regular who's somehow missed the previous 16 installments. Coleman sounds nothing like Robert B. Parker, but if you can accept a truly far-fetched premise, this will keep franchise fans more than satisfied.\n- Kirkus Reviews