Reed Farrel Coleman has done the truly remarkable in a short amount of time. After just two novels, his revival of Robert B. Parker’s Jesse Stone series has moved this already fine canon to the top of many must-read lists. Coleman hasn’t changed the bedrock personality of the flawed and damaged police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, but has given him a darker and more complex playground to occupy. Throw in some secondary characters, old and new, who are worthy of Jesse’s company, and you have a series that not only compels reading but creates anticipation.

"Coleman hasn’t changed the bedrock personality of the flawed and damaged police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts, but has given him a darker and more complex playground to occupy. Throw in some secondary characters, old and new, who are worthy of Jesse’s company, and you have a series that not only compels reading but creates anticipation."

THE DEVIL WINS begins in the aftermath of a snowstorm that takes down a long-abandoned factory in a downtrodden area of Paradise known as The Swap. The body of a recently murdered, unidentified man is discovered, wrapped in a tarp among the wreckage. Further examination of the crime scene uncovers something nearby that is even more horrific: two long-hidden corpses that solve one of Paradise’s long-unresolved mysteries but quickly create another. Two teenage girls had disappeared from Paradise a quarter-century earlier during a Fourth of July holiday. Rumors had abounded as to the reason for their absence --- everything from running away to an accident --- but the discovery of their skeletal remains so close to that of a more recent murder victim reopens wounds in the town that had never healed since their disappearance.

Jesse is upset that he was never told of the unsolved disappearances, which has hung like a silent pall over the town, and is all the more distressed when he learns that Molly Crane, a Paradise police officer whom he considers to be his best, was a close friend of both girls and may have information about their final hours. A great deal of pressure is applied to Jesse by the town government to solve the three murders and to do so quickly.

The pressure on Jesse is further ratcheted up when the mother of one of the girls, who has returned to Paradise for her daughter’s funeral, is also found dead. Her death appears to be the result of a suicide, yet Jesse is not entirely sure. Evidence soon turns up indicating that this latest incident may be a murder as well. When two suspects with long-ago ties to the murdered girls are themselves found dead, everything seems to be tied up just a little too neatly. Jesse thinks he knows who may be behind all of the deaths that are suddenly taking place in Paradise, but he must prove what he knows. He sets a trap, one that ultimately lures the suspect out, but not without putting himself and his patrolmen in danger as well.

THE DEVIL WINS advances the Jesse Stone canon just a bit and in a very interesting way. His life appears on the verge of becoming slightly more complicated (not that he’ll be complaining, I suspect), even as the plots under Coleman’s steady hand become more complex while the stories maintain a solid and dependable readability. Look for these books to become more popular as Coleman gets deeper into the series.