A pair of couldn't-be-less-related murders are at the heart of Jesse Stone's latest case. All too soon after the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, relaxes by taking in a baseball game the Paradise Pirates win over neighboring Marshport High, the town is devastated by the discovery of shortstop Jack Carlisle's body on the rocks below Bluff Lookout. Since Jack was not only a bona fide baseball star, but the nephew of Detective Luther "Suitcase" Simpson, the case is guaranteed top priority--until the stonewalling of Jack's teammates and his girlfriend, Ainsley Walsh, who may have been two-timing him with first baseman Scott Ford, is upstaged by a second fatality, the shooting of retired Paradise police chief Charlie Farrell in his home. Rejecting the possibility that two such sudden deaths could be coincidental, Jesse beats the bushes looking for a connection. Along the way he finds angry parents, links to a cryptocurrency ring, mobbed-up heavies, a third corpse, and a growing series of hints that the center of this criminal maelstrom, if indeed it has a center, is newcomer Hillary More's candy store, More Chocolate, which turns out to have brought together a remarkably far-flung crowd of sweet-toothed suspects. Manfully resisting the questions of local reporter Nellie Shofner, to whom he says "We're friends with benefits. Just not those kind of benefits," Jesse miraculously ties all these felonies together and manages to elude the latest crime boss he's run afoul of. The helter-skelter ending is a small price to pay for such an effective series of small-town jolts. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Voice of Fear, the latest in Graham's long-running paranormal romantic suspense series, FBI agent Jordan Wallace worries about new partner Patrick's special gift of getting into another's mind--can he read her thoughts?--but must learn to trust him as they hunt for a nasty killer (400,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Johansen's Captive, Eve Duncan's daughter, Jane, is happily married to Seth Caleb, but his troubled past means threats from a psychopath. Paradise police chief Jesse Stone returns in Mike Lupica's Untitled new Robert Parker thriller, though what happens next has yet to be revealed. In Maden's Clive Cussler's Hellburner, Juan Cabrillo and his Oregon crew face a particularly violent drug-smuggling criminal syndicate that has been passed down from father to son for generations. In Patterson and Dubois's Blowback, Liam Grey and Noa Himel are upended when President Keegan Barrett orders them to help execute his secret power grab; as CIA special agents, they must follow the president's directives but are sworn to uphold the Constitution. In Turow's Suspect, Clarice "Pinky" Granum--granddaughter of Turow stalwart Sandy Stern--is working second-tier cases as a private investigator and trying to recoup from the mistakes of a mislaid life when she's asked to help Highland Isle police chief Lucia Gomez, who has been accused of soliciting sex from three male police officers in exchange for promotions.

In his third Jesse Stone novel (following earlier re-creations of the Robert B. Parker character by Michael Brandman and Reed Farrel Coleman), Lupica gives Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief Stone two nasty cases to solve, both involving deeply personal connections to Stone's past. The first is the murder of Stone's mentor and predecessor as chief, Charlie Farrell, and the second concerns the mysterious death of a high-school baseball player, star shortstop Jack Carlisle, the nephew of Stone's deputy, Luther "Suitcase" Simpson. Stone, a former star shortstop himself, hasn't had a drink in many years, but the reverberations from both these cases put him on the edge this time. Lupica has proved himself a capable plotter in his past Parker ventures, as well as his own fiction, and that facility is on display here, as he skillfully brings the two cases together while subtly serving a course of tantalizing red herrings. Longtime Parker followers will be particularly pleased to find several secondary characters from past novels making brief appearances here, especially Boston gang boss Tony Marcus, the lethal Ty-Bop, and freelance Apache hitman Wilson "Crow" Cromartie, all of whom give Lupica the chance to showcase how well he has picked up the nuances of Parker patter in all its forms.