Blind Spot Book Review

I passed the new release section and saw the next book in the Robert Parker series about Jesse Stone.  I couldn't pass it up even though I knew that it would have no renewal and I had to finish reading another book first.  Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot (A Jesse Stone Novel) by Reed Farrel Coleman was the first book by the new author writing in this series.  I was interested in seeing how he was different from the author that wrote the last few and Robert Parker.

It’s been a long time since Jesse Stone left L.A., and still longer since the tragic injury that ruined his chances for a major league baseball career. When Jesse is invited to a reunion of his old Triple-A team at a hip New York city hotel, he is forced to grapple with his memories and regrets over what might have been.

Jesse left more behind him than unresolved feelings about the play that ended his baseball career. The darkly sensuous Kayla, his former girlfriend and current wife of an old teammate is there in New York, too. As is Kayla’s friend, Dee, an otherworldly beauty with secret regrets of her own. But Jesse’s time at the reunion is cut short when, in Paradise, a young woman is found murdered and her boyfriend, a son of one of the town’s most prominent families, is missing and presumed kidnapped.

Though seemingly coincidental, there is a connection between the reunion and the crimes back in Paradise. As Jesse, Molly, and Suit hunt for the killer and for the missing son, it becomes clear that one of Jesse’s old teammates is intimately involved in the crimes. That there are deadly forces working below the surface and just beyond the edge of their vision. Sometimes, that’s where the danger comes from, and where real evil lurks. Not out in the light—but in your blind spot.

I didn't like this book as much as others because I thought the characters had changed from the authors perspective.  I am sure that the story itself was very Robert Parker style but the writing stopped me from enjoying it as much as I normally do.  It took a book that was an easy read into something that seems to beat you over the head with what the characters were thinking instead of just leading you into it.  I know that I love Robert Parker's books including the two written by the same person who wrote the screen play for the movies.  I think that I might be over them if they are going to be written by a bunch of different authors.  There is nothing that I can point to and say that I didn't like the author's writing style but it just brought down the book because there were so many things that didn't seem natural for Jesse Stone to say or do and it had me a little confused.  I wouldn't really recommend reading this book unless you know that it is a different author upfront.  Did you read this book after reading the series?  What did you think??