David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "jesse-stone-series"
The Bitterest Pill
The title has to do with an opioid epidemic at the Paradise High School. A popular cheerleader has turned up dead from an overdose. Jesse quickly identifies a student suspect as her source, but he turns up missing and is eventually found dead, having been tortured before being shot.
Reed Farrel Coleman, Parker's most successful replacement, gives the drug chain their own point of view. They're mostly Eastern Europeans with a Moslem thrown in for good measure. There's also a female teacher involved.
I'm actually more familiar with the TV movies than I am with the Jesse Stone series written by Parker. There are some disappointments. There's no lovable dog in this one, Reggie. And Jesse's relationship with his favorite deputy Suit is given short shrift. Jesse no longer drinks and attends AA meetings with a sponsor, but the baseball connection is still there. Jesse was once a minor league prospect; he's got a new glove but it's not as good as his old one.
Jesse also has a son he didn't know about. The son finds Jesse, and at first, he's still blaming Jesse for not knowing his birth father, but their relationship improves and almost gets the boy killed.
Jesse quickly becomes involved in an affair with one of the teachers. We know one of the teachers is seducing her student drug pushers from her anonymous point of view, and we hope it's not her; we don't find out for sure until the last part of the book.
The last part of the book reads faster because we're closing in on the teacher and we want her Jesse's girlfriend to be a red herring. A lot of people wind up dead, but we never find out who the higher ups are, so we're right where we were at the beginning with no assurance that Jesse has solved the problem. There might be another BITTEREST PILL.
Reed Farrel Coleman, Parker's most successful replacement, gives the drug chain their own point of view. They're mostly Eastern Europeans with a Moslem thrown in for good measure. There's also a female teacher involved.
I'm actually more familiar with the TV movies than I am with the Jesse Stone series written by Parker. There are some disappointments. There's no lovable dog in this one, Reggie. And Jesse's relationship with his favorite deputy Suit is given short shrift. Jesse no longer drinks and attends AA meetings with a sponsor, but the baseball connection is still there. Jesse was once a minor league prospect; he's got a new glove but it's not as good as his old one.
Jesse also has a son he didn't know about. The son finds Jesse, and at first, he's still blaming Jesse for not knowing his birth father, but their relationship improves and almost gets the boy killed.
Jesse quickly becomes involved in an affair with one of the teachers. We know one of the teachers is seducing her student drug pushers from her anonymous point of view, and we hope it's not her; we don't find out for sure until the last part of the book.
The last part of the book reads faster because we're closing in on the teacher and we want her Jesse's girlfriend to be a red herring. A lot of people wind up dead, but we never find out who the higher ups are, so we're right where we were at the beginning with no assurance that Jesse has solved the problem. There might be another BITTEREST PILL.
