Synopsis: 'In the wake of a huge storm, three bodies are discovered in the rubble of an abandoned factory building in an industrial part of Paradise known as The Swap. One body, a man's, wrapped in a blue tarp, is only hours old. But found within feet of that body are the skeletal remains of two teenage girls who had gone missing during a Fourth of July celebration twenty-five years earlier. Not only does that crime predate Jesse Stone's arrival in Paradise, but the dead girls were close friends of Jesse's right hand, Officer Molly Crane. And things become even more complicated when one of the dead girls' mothers returns to Paradise to bury her daughter and is promptly murdered. It's up to Police Chief Jesse Stone to pull away the veil of the past to see how all the murders are connected.' From author website.

Review: Good story! Lots of twists and turns. ( )

A Nor'easter blows into Paradise, Mass as police respond to a badly mutilated body in an abandon building which collapses from the wind partly covering an officer and the body. When the debris is removed safely from the officer, the bodies of two teenage girls missing for 25 years are also found in the building. This reopens many unhappy memories in the small town and creates a complicated murder case for Police Chief Jesse Stone to solve.

As more people disappear and the bodies pile up, pressure to find a solution make life hectic for Stone as he balances his complicated personal life with his work.

A complicated murder case along with interesting characters made this a book I couldn't put down. This was my first Jesse Stone novel and I will be looking for others.. ( )

This is the second book I've read from the Jesse Stone series, and again I enjoyed the read.

A storm hits Paradise, Mass. and reveals three dead bodies. Two girls who have been missing for twenty-five years and a recently deceased man's. Jesse Stone is faced with digging up the past to solve the murder. The trouble is that in a small town the past can be buried very deep, and people don't, or won't, talk about it. There is also the problem of whether the deaths are related.

The discovery of the girls' bodies open old wounds for some of the citizens. Wounds that they don't want to talk about. The discovery hits hard for one of Jesse's officers - Molly Crane. She was a schoolmate of the girls.

New characters and relationships are introduced, and more of Jesse's past is revealed, all adding to a little more depth of Jesse's character. The chapters are on the short side, but this can be a good thing if you only have time to read short snips. It keeps the plot and action moving, yet does give good information.

It is interesting that this series is written by other writers, not Parker, and I could feel that this was a different writer from the previous one I read. Over all they try to stay true to the character and style, making it a smoother move from book to book. ( )

Just how ironic the name of "Paradise" is has never been so clear. In this book, the bodies make quite a stack. First there's the corpse of a newly-returned former resident nicknamed "Zevon" -- found in a collapsing building but clearly a victim of murder. Then there's the skeletonized corpses of two teenage girls who had disappeared 25 years ago -- lying in the same location as Zevon. The mother of one of the girls is found at the bottom of a cliff-- a supposed suicide, but another murder. Then, over the course of the tale, no fewer than 3 men are murdered, and attempts are made on the lives of two others. It all has to do with the 25-year old crime. And police chief Jesse Stone is given 1 week by the city council to figure it all out... a highly implausible demand.

This is Reed Coleman's second attempt to carry on Robert B. Parker's Jesse Stone series. He's more successful here than in Blind Spot, but the latter was so very bad that the author had nowhere to go but up. In The Devil Wins Coleman has abandoned the practice of filling page after page with near- monosyllabic dialogue, in favor of presenting an actual story with actual characters. The characters bear the same names as in Parker's series, but feel like different people. Jesse is no longer an ex-alcoholic; he drinks like the proverbial marine teleost. And contrary to the way Parker left him in Split Image he's back being manipulated by his ex-wife. Suit is there (barely), and Molly too, though not very recognizably.

Here's the upshot of the plot: Some 25 years earlier, the 2 girls had accompanied 5 boys to a nearby island. There's little wonder what the boys had in mind so the mystery is how the girls could have been so naive. One thing led to another and one of the girls is murdered, requiring murder of the other. Now, 25 years later, Zevon (one of the 5) has reappeared, and wants to confess, so naturally, he had to be killed. Another of the five starts acting "guilty and unstable" and so he and another have to be killed. Then a 4th is targeted to cover the other murders, leaving only 1 perpetrator for Jesse to find and trap.

The writing is amateurish, with passages that range from incoherent to peculiar. "Down below, the crests of the waves were chopped by the wind. When they came ashore, they came barreling in with nasty intent. But that hadn't stopped Maxie Connolly from putting her husband to bed and coming to that old familiar spot on the Bluffs". and on the next page: "In spite of the guilt and pain, she didn't know how much longer she could contain herself. She thought she might orgasm at the sound of his tires spitting out gravel as his car approached, but she told herself she had to hold it together." wow, really? Then there's the loose ends. Jesse ruminates about an article he read, describing the discovery of a WW2 era airplane in the Libyan desert, where it'd been buried for 40 years. "There was something eating at him. Something about the article that he'd forgotten, that he wanted to remember yet just couldn't. " The motif is a cliché, and is supposed to foreshadow a sudden revelation later in the book. But we never get back to it, and the airplane rotting in the Libyan desert doesn't relate to anything. Why mention it then? Did the author forget he'd introduced it?

On top of the rest, I found this book to be boring. With few redeeming features, I give it a 1.5 star rating. ( )

Coleman isn't Robert Parker by a long-shot, but once you get past that; it's reasonably OK ( )