“You
know what I think, Chief Stone?”
“What’s
that?”
“Most
of the time he loses, but sometimes the devil wins.” (Page 243)
It isn’t a point Police Chief Jesse
Stone can argue. First with the LAPD and now with the Paradise PD, Stone has
seen things that prove to him that evil does exist in the world whether or not
one wants to specifically ascribe such things to the devil. It is especially
true currently with the discovery of the recent bodies in Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins.
The Nor’easter that struck Paradise,
Massachusetts was a hard storm. It did damage around the area including causing
the partial collapse of an old abandoned factory building on Trench Alley. This
is an area of town that does not fit the picture post card idea of a scenic New
England town and won’t any time soon. It is an area of decay featuring old and
long abandoned warehouse buildings that in their day provided jobs and now
serve to be last resort refuge for the homeless, drug users, and others.
In checking out the collapse, Office
Molly Crane found a body. A body that near as she could tell in the few minutes
she was surveying the scene had not been there long. She didn’t get to look at
the scene much before the Fire Department folks arrived and she was ordered out
of the building. Good thing to as minutes after Jesse Stone arrives on site and
is briefed by Crane, more of the building collapses.
When, days later, Molly and Jesse
are finally allowed back into the building they discover that the body is not
alone. Two other bodies, dead for years, are also present. Two skeletons that,
based on what little are left, appear to be childhood friends of Molly Crane. Two
young teen friends who vanished without a trace years ago.
With Suit still recovering from
recent events and limited to desk duty and Molly nowhere near the top of her
game due to her close proximity to the case, it is up to Jesse Stone to figure
out what happened and how everything is connected. He also has to stop a killer
or killers bent on tying up their last few loose ends.
Author Reed Farrel Coleman’s latest
effort in the Jesse Stone series is another good one. This read finds Jesse finally
at home in Paradise (after all it has been ten years) and at peace with his
drinking. In several other areas he is not remotely at peace and the guilt over
those situations drives him as he works to solve the murders in a town that
doesn’t want to deal with its own shameful past. Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins
is another good one as Red Farrell Coleman makes it all work from start to
twisted and surprising finish.
Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins: A Jesse Stone Novel
Reed Farrel Coleman
Thorndike Press (Gale Cengage
Learning)
September 2015
ISBN# 978-1-4104-8027-9
LARGE PRINT Hardback (also available
in regular print hardback, e-book, and audio formats)
490 Pages
$37.99
Material supplied by the good folks
of the Plano Public Library System who do not care if my review is objective or
not and just want their books and movies back on time and undamaged.
Kevin R. Tipple ©2015
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