Paradise, Massachusetts, police chief Jesse Stone confronts a town's darkest secrets in the shocking new novel from the New York Times–bestselling author and "America's greatest mystery writer" (The New York Sun).

Things are getting strange in Paradise, Massachusetts. Police Chief Jesse Stone is called to the junior high school when reports of lewd conduct by the school's principal, Betsy Ingersoll, filter into the station. Ingersoll claims she was protecting the propriety of her students when she inspected each girl's undergarments in the locker room. Jesse would like nothing more than to see Ingersoll punished, but her high-powered attorney husband stands in the way. At the same time, the women of Paradise are faced with a threat to their sense of security with the emergence of a tormented voyeur, dubbed "The Night Hawk." Initially, he's content to peer through windows, but as times goes on, he becomes more reckless, forcing his victims to strip at gunpoint, then photographing them at their most vulnerable. And according to the notes he's sending to Jesse, he's not satisfied to stop there. It's up to Jesse to catch the Night Hawk, before it's too late.

Robert B. Parker has long been acknowledged as the dean of American crime fiction. His novel featuring the wise-cracking, street-smart Boston private-eye Spenser have earned him a devoted following and reams of critical acclaim, typified by R.W.B. Lewis’ comment, “We are witnessing one of the great series in the history of the American detective story” (The New York Times Book Review). Robert Parker’s most recent bestsellers include his Spenser novel, Widow’s Walk, and Death in Paradise, his third Jesse Stone novel. His first western, Gunman’s Rhapsody was published in 2001.

Parker’s other works include the classic Poodle Springs, a novel completed from an unfinished manuscript begun by the late Raymond Chandler, and Perchance To Dream, the sequel to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep. Ironically, Parker wrote about Chandler in a chapter of his doctoral thesis about the evolution of the American Hero, beginning with the colonial period and ending with the twentieth century mystery writers. As fate would have it, Parker has now become one of the best of them: “Robert B. Parker has taken his place besides the Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald” (The Boston Globe).

Born and raised in Massachusetts, Parker attended Colby College in Maine, serves with the Army in Korea, and then completed a Ph.D. in English at Boston University. He married his wife Joan in 1956; they raised two sons, David and Daniel. Together the Parkers founded Pearl Productions, a Boston-based independent film company named after their short-haired pointer, Pearl, who has also been featured in Parker’s last few novels. He and Joan now live in the Boston area.

Parker began writing his Spenser novels in 1971 while teaching at Boston’s Northeastern University. Little did he suspect then that his witty, literate prose and psychological insights would make him keeper-of-the-flame of America’s rich tradition of detective fiction. Parker’s fictional Spenser inspired the ABC-TV series Spenser: For Hire. More recently, the Spenser novels Small Vices and Thin Air have been made into television films for the A&E network. Parker has recently been named Grand Master of the 2002 Edgar awards by the Mystery Writers of America, an honor shared with earlier masters such as Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen.