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What started out as a joke landed seventeen-year-old Dillon Yates in a lockdown juvenile facility in Boston Harbor. When he set up a prank Twitter account for his vice principal, he never dreamed he could be brought up on criminal charges, but that’s exactly what happened.
This is Blackburn, Massachusetts, where zero tolerance for minors is a way of life.
Leading the movement is tough-as-nails Judge Joe Scali, who gives speeches about getting tough on today’s wild youth. But Dillon’s mother, who knows other Blackburn kids who are doing hard time for minor infractions, isn’t buying Scali’s line. She hires Spenser to find the truth behind the draconian sentencing.
From the Harbor Islands to a gated Florida community, Spenser and trusted ally Hawk follow a trail through the Boston underworld with links to a shadowy corporation that runs New England’s private prisons. They eventually uncover a culture of corruption and cover-ups in the old mill town, where hundreds of kids are sent off to for-profit juvie jails.
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Release date
May 19, 2015 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780553398199
- File size: 206679 KB
- Duration: 07:10:34
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 9, 2015
A topical plot line propels bestseller Atkins’s engrossing fourth Spenser novel (after 2014’s Robert B. Parker’s Cheap Shot). Sheila Yates, a resident of Blackburn, Mass., turns to the Boston PI for help when her teenage son, Dillon, is arrested and charged with terrorism after setting up a fake Twitter account for his high school vice principal. In Blackburn’s juvenile court system, the accused are routinely denied the right to counsel. Judge Scali, the “Zero Tolerance for Minors guy,” sentences Dillon to Fortune Island, a boot camp supposedly designed to rehabilitate offenders. In Blackburn, Spencer receives a less than warm welcome and quickly learns the extent of the problem. Atkins builds tension by alternating Spenser’s wry first-person narration with third-person sections recounting the horrific conditions on Fortune Island. Lending support are Spenser’s wingman, the deadly Hawk, and his soul mate, psychiatrist Susan Silverman. Once again, Atkins has done a splendid job of capturing the voice of the late Robert B. Parker. Author tour. Agent: Helen Brann, Helen Brann Agency.
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