Spenser, a Boston private investigator, agrees to help local lawyer Elizabeth Shaw track down a man who has been blackmailing and murdering the wives of Elizabeth's wealthy clients, but as the case becomes increasingly complicated, Spenser fears he may be in over his head.

Police Chief Jesse Stone is shocked when Wilson "Crow" Cromartie, an Apache hit man who escaped Stone's grasp ten years ago, arrives in his office warning Jesse to stay out of his way as he searches for a missing woman whose father wants her back and is willing to risk anything to help her escape from the violent gang she's involved with.

Former Los Angeles police officer Jesse Stone, fired for drinking on the job, has taken a position as Chief of Police in Paradise, Massachusetts, but he learns that big city crime can happen even in the most bucolic of towns when the body of a young woman washes up on the shore of a local lake.

Boston private investigator Sunny Randall is forced onto dangerous ground, both physically and emotionally, when she is hired to protect a prominent feminist whose life is being threatened, while her older sister and her best friend both demand her help with their rocky marriages.

Boston private detective Spenser finds himself at odds with mobster Sonny Karnofsky when his investigation of the decades-old murder of Emily Gordon, gunned down during a bank heist, turns up links to the killing of Karnofsky's daughter.