Robert B Parker

Hired by a museum to provide protection during a ransom exchange for a stolen painting, Spenser is personally outraged when the ransom fails and the painting is not recovered, a case that makes him suspect the innocence of the art scholar who retained him.

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 Petrov Ognowski and a religious cult holding an 18-year-old girl against her will.

A broken marriage and a drinking problem propels LAPD cop Jesse Stone into accepting what he believes will be a peaceful job as police chief in the small town of Paradise, Massachusetts, but he quickly learns that the surface quiet of the community masks a hotbed of crime, and he must choose whether he will be a hero or a dupe.

Spenser knows something’s amiss the moment Dennis Doherty walks into his office. The guy’s aggressive yet wary, in the way men frightened for their marriages always are. So when Doherty asks Spenser to investigate his wife Jordan’s abnormal behavior, Spenser agrees. A job’s a job, after all.
Not surprisingly, Spenser catches Jordan with another man, tells Dennis what he’s found out, and considers the case closed. But...

Paradise, Massachusetts, Police Chief Jesse Stone must deal in his own laconic way with the town's rights and wrongs, including a Peeping Tom, the Paradise Free Swingers, and a firestorm of protests at the junior high school.

Lily Ellsworth the grand dame of Dowling, Massachusetts hires Spenser to investigate her grandson Jared Clark's alleged involvement in a school shooting. Though seven people were killed in cold blood, and despite Jared's being named as a co-conspirator by the other shooter, Mrs. Ellsworth is convinced of her grandson's innocence.

Investigating a thrill-seeking pair of serial killers who are targeting the residents of an affluent suburban town, police chief Jesse Stone finds his job complicated by local politicians, the media, his drinking problem, and his ex-wife.

Hired to counter a blackmailer who has had affairs with several wealthy women, Boston private eye Spenser finds the case turning violent when the women are systematically murdered.

Spenser is forced by loyalty into an alien world where violence is a way of life and outsiders enter at a lethal risk. When Spenser's cohort Hawk is hired by the tenants of a gang-plagued Boston housing project known as "Double Duce," he enlists his friend's aid. A Teenage girl and her infant daughtre have been gunned down. Though the act at first appears to be an accidental drive-by shooting, it soon becomes clear that it was premediatated murder.

...

"P.I. Spenser, knight-errant of the Back Bay, returns in this stellar addition to the iconic New York Times-bestselling series from author Ace Atkins. 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,...