Crime novel 'Blind Spot' is well-plotted

It's been years since Jesse Stone, police chief in the mythical town of Paradise, Massachusetts, had his pro baseball career shattered in a collision at second base. So it is with considerable reluctance that he decides to attend a reunion of his old minor league team.

However, a murder at the home of a wealthy Paradise family forces him to rush back to Paradise. There, he learns that a former teammate might have been involved in the crime. That is the premise of “Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot,” a well-plotted crime novel that's a worthy successor to the late Parker's body of work.

When Parker died in 2010, fans assumed that Stone and Parker's other memorable series characters, a Boston private eye named Spenser and a pair of Western lawmen named Hitch and Cole, had perished with him. But Parker's publisher, G.P. Putnam's Sons, decided to keep the money train on the tracks.

Ace Atkins, the veteran crime novelist selected to continue the Spenser series, has responded with three fine novels written in a style that closely resembles Parker's. But until now, Parker's other characters have suffered under new authorship. Robert Knott's two Hitch and Cole novels have not been well-reviewed. And three Jesse Stone novels by Michael Brandman suffered from a weak writing style.

Now, the publisher has put Jesse Stone in good hands, replacing Brandman with Reed Farrel Coleman, a three-time Edgar Award finalist.

Unlike Atkins, Coleman hasn't attempted to mimic Parker. Instead, Coleman is continuing the Stone saga in his own crisp prose style. For one thing, Coleman says, he doubts that he could reproduce Parker's distinctive voice. For another, Spenser is the late author's most iconic character; Parker wrote only nine Stone novels. That, Coleman says, gives him the freedom to continue the series in his own style — and room to explore fresh aspects of the character.

Given the excellent prose and plotting of “Blind Spot,” Jesse Stone fans will be eager to discover where Coleman takes this compelling series next.