This novel is readable but seems simplistic after reading Child and Carr. There is no great mystery about who the bad guy is, it is just a matter of letting the good guys stop the bad guys by the end of the book. In other words, these books are strictly character driven. ( )

Synopsis: 'When a popular high school cheerleader dies of a suspected heroin overdose, it becomes clear that the opioid epidemic has spread even to the idyllic town of Paradise. It will be up to police chief Jesse Stone to unravel the supply chain and unmask the criminals behind it, and the investigation has a clear epicenter: Paradise High School. Home of the town's best and brightest future leaders and its most vulnerable down-and-out teens, it's a rich and bottomless market for dealers out of Boston looking to expand into the suburbs.
But when it comes to drugs, the very people Jesse is trying to protect are often those with the most to lose. As he digs deeper into the case, he finds himself battling self-interested administrators, reluctant teachers, distrustful schoolkids, and overprotective parents . . . and at the end of the line are the true bad guys, the ones with a lucrative business they'd kill to protect.' From web site.

Review: Good story. ( )

I don't know why I keep returning to the post-Parker follow ups to his novels. The new authors assemble a thin gruel out of the peelings and leftovers of Parker's originals. Even Parker was going a bit stale a the end, but at least his snappy and witty dialogue kept a bite of spice in his tired recipes. ( )

The opioid epidemic has reached Paradise.

This is the last of the Coleman books in this series and it works a lot better than any of the earlier ones by him. It still does not catch the tone of Parker but it is closer to the spirit, with a lot less subtlety (as weird as it is to call Parker subtle, especially in this series) and with a lot less conversations.

A high school student overdoses in her own bed - and it seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. Paradise had been hit by the opioid crisis - it had been going on for awhile but this death finally brings it to the attention of Jesse and the police department. And the more they dig, the worse it looks. It is not just kids popping pills, it seems like there is someone in the shadows causing things to escalate. And when things start pointing towards Boston, Jesse goes to check in with Vinnie Morris.

As usual with Coleman, we get to see the bad guys early on (and some of the heavies are Bulgarian). By the time Jesse finally gets on their trail, it is also obvious that there is someone in town who is causing a lot of the mess.

A note: if you are going to use a language you do not know, get someone who speaks the language to check whatever your characters are saying in context -- the few Bulgarian phrases were either wrongly inflected (it is a highly inflected language) or were literal translations that have different meaning and usage in the context used (not every language uses the word shit as a curse...).

It is a good crime novel but it did not need to be a Jesse Stone novel - one could have replaced him with a John Doe and the story would have survived almost in tact. The few Jesse moments seemed to be there to compensate for that. Which happens occasionally with series but still. Meanwhile the Cole story got somewhat of positive movement so we will see how that goes in the next book when Mike Lupica takes over. ( )