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Inside the List

The Writing Dead

Reed Farrel Coleman

The mystery novelist Reed Farrel Coleman was watching TV in May 2013 when his agent called and asked him, “How would you like to be Robert B. Parker?”

“It took me about a nanosecond to say yes,” Coleman wrote on his website. “We all dream about unexpected magical moments — chance encounters, phone calls, emails — that will transform us, but do we ever believe they will happen?”

These days, when a popular author dies, financially savvy heirs often commission someone to keep writing his or her books. (There’s even a term for this: “continuation literature.”) Sophie Hannah writes Agatha Christie novels; David Lagercrantz channels Stieg Larsson; Anthony Horowitz has taken on Ian Fleming. That’s what Robert B. Parker’s family decided to do when the crime novelist died in 2010. “Spenser was a cash cow,” Parker’s wife, Joan, told The Boston Globe in 2012, referring to her husband’s most beloved character, a Boston private eye. “And we felt that Bob would want to see Spenser live on.” In 2011, they hired Ace Atkins to write more Spenser novels, and in 2013 they asked Coleman to take on a different series, the one starring the Massachusetts cop Jesse Stone.

For Coleman, saying yes was the easy part. “It’s one thing to be offered to step into a great man’s shoes. It is quite another to stare at the blank screen and figure out what to do,” he says ruefully. So he called Atkins. “He gave me some tips on how my life was about to change,” Coleman says. “He suggested that I never go to the fan sites. Of course, that was the first thing I did.”

The best advice came from a close friend. “He said, ‘Reed, I’m a huge Elvis fan and I’ve seen the greatest Elvis impersonators in the world. And sadly, there’s two things they cannot escape. First, no matter how good their act, I always know it’s not really Elvis. Second, they can never do anything new.’

“When he said that, I knew in my bones that I wouldn’t try to imitate Bob’s style for fear of being seen as a cheap impersonator,” Coleman says. His Jesse Stone books have the same flavor and feel as his own novels, which are suffused with details from his Brooklyn upbringing. (The Times once called Coleman’s books “gritty little postcards from his childhood home.”)

[ When he was 15, Reed Farrel Coleman saw a man get murdered. It changed his life. ]

Writing style aside, Coleman has remained true to Jesse Stone. “I like to say that Bob and I use the same camera, but attach different lenses,” he says. His latest Stone book, “Robert B. Parker’s Colorblind,” debuts this week at No. 11.

Follow Tina Jordan on Twitter: @TinaJordanNYT

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Page 28 of the Sunday Book Review. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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