The crack of a handgun shatters the silence of a warm summer night.... A notorious local felon and former child magician vanishes, seemingly without a trace.... A corrupt police force applies a stranglehold to a failing town.... An ailing old man hatches a last-ditch plan to save the police department he once headed, and the community he still loves.... An outsider arrives, bearing a simple recipe for death that could destroy them all.... The town...

What initially appears to be a low-level mob hit takes on new meaning when a high-ranking crime figure is found dead on Paradise Beach. Jesse Stone and private investigator Sunny Randall team up to solve two cases involving the gunshot murder of Petr

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.