Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind: A Jesse Stone Novel

Edgar-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. [em]Author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM Partners. (Sept.) [/em]