Jesse Stone is a down-and-out former L.A. police detective whose biggest battle is now against the bottle, as the demons of his past rise to haunt him while he drives himself to distraction by pursuing a decade-old murder case. Finding refuge in the small town of Paradise, Chief Stone reopens an unsolved murder case, digging up clues in an old grave and pursuing the ghosts of a forgotten crime. But it's not just the victim's and killer's pasts that...

Following his divorce and the loss of his job as a homicide detective with the LAPD, Jesse Stone travels across the country to Paradise, Massachusetts where he is recruited by the town's board of selectmen to become the new Chief of Police. But things are not quite so heavenly in Paradise, as Stone starts off his first day on the job investigating a domestic abuse case that leads to a money-laundering scheme possibly involving bank manager Hasty Hathaway--...

During a horse drive to Wyoming, a man and his estranged nephew meet a man transporting five Chinese girls to a brothel; the next morning he is gone with the drovers' money, leaving the girls behind. The intended buyer sends a hired gun out to retrieve her property, as the cowboys try to keep the girls safe, and deliver the herd of horses.

Jesse investigates the grim works of a serial killer in Boston and becomes concerned with a wayward teen in Paradise.