A major crime-fiction event from the creator of the Spenser novels.The author of two dozen Spenser novels as well as numerous other works of fiction, Robert B. Parker is no stranger to both critical and popular acclaim. With his hallmark spare prose, sharp wit, and taut action, Parker has created in the Spenser series a character considered the paragon of private eyes, the standard against which all contemporary detective novels are measured. In Night Passage, Parker sets the bar even higher, with the introduction of Jesse Stone, a hero cut from different cloth.After a busted marriage kicks his drinking problem into overdrive and the LAPD unceremoniously dumps him, the thirty-five-year-old Stone's future looks bleak. So he's shocked when a small Massachusetts town called Paradise recruits him as police chief. Jesse can't help but wonder if this job is a genuine chance to start over, the kind of offer he can't refuse.Once on board, Jesse doesn't have to look for trouble in Paradise: it comes to him. For what is on the surface a quiet New England community quickly proves to be a crucible of political and moral corruption'replete with triple homicide, tight Boston mob ties, flamboyantly errant spouses, maddened militiaman, even a psychopath-about-town who has fixed his violent sights on the new lawman. Against all this, Jesse stands utterly alone with no one to trust; even he and the woman he's seeing are like ships that pass in the night. He finds he must test his mettle and powers of command to emerge a local hero'or the deadest of dupes.Fresh and wry, meditative and action-packed, Night Passage is first-rate Parker. As the flagship volume in a new series featuring a complex and engaging sleuth, it is doubly cause for celebration.