Blue-Eyed Devil

Family ties prove deadly in the brilliant new Jesse Stone novel from New York Times-bestselling author Robert B. Parker.

The body in the trunk was just the beginning.

Turns out the stiff was a foot soldier for local tough guy Reggie Galen, now enjoying a comfortable "retirement" with his beautiful wife, Rebecca, in the nicest part of Paradise. Living next door are Knocko Moynihan and his wife, Robbie, who also happens to be Rebecca's twin. But 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.

Stressed by the case, his failed relationship with his ex-wife, and his ongoing battle with the bottle, Jesse needs something to keep him from spinning out of control. When private investigator Sunny Randall comes into town on a case, she asks for Jesse's help. As their professional and personal relationships become intertwined, both Jesse and Sunny realize that they have much in common with both their victims and their suspects-and with each other.

Chief of Police Jesse Stone returns to investigate the murder of a troubled teenager in a seemingly bucolic New England town. The Paradise Men's Softball League has wrapped up another game, and Jesse Stone is lingering in the parking lot with his team-mates, drinking beer, swapping stories of double plays and beautiful women in the late summer twilight. But then a voice, scared, calls out to him from the edge of a nearby lake. He walks to the sound, where two men squat at the water's edge. In front of them, face down, is something that used to be a girl. The local cops haven't seen anything like this, but Jesse's LA past has made him all too familiar with floaters. This floating girl hadn't committed suicide, she hadn't been drowned: she'd been shot, and dumped, discarded like trash. Before long it becomes clear that the dead girl had a reputation and a taste for the wild life; and her own parents can't even be bothered to report her missing, or admit that she once was a child of theirs. All Jesse has to go on is a young man's school ring on a gold chain, and a hunch or two. At the same time, Jesse must battle two demons from his past: a renewed struggle with the bottle, and a continuing relationship with his ex-wife. Neither one will help him solve the case, and either one could jeopardize his career – and his life. Filled with magnetic characters and the muscular writing that are Parker's trademarks, Death in Paradise is a storytelling masterpiece.

A former L.A. homicide cop with a drinking problem, a broken marriage, and some lost dreams, Stone has just been hired to be police chief of the small Massachusetts town of Paradise. The Paradise power brokers are sure surprised when Stone not only doesn’t look the other way at various goings-on but also starts looking into such matters as money laundering, militia activities, and murder.

All Our Yesterdays opens amid the violence and tumult of 1920s Ireland with Conn Sheridan, a reckless young IRA captain. Conn’s forbidden affair with Hadley Winslow, a Boston tycoon’s wife, initiates a dangerous entanglement of desire and blackmail between two families that will span three generations. When a shattering betrayal forces Conn to flee Ireland, he begins a new life in America as a Boston cop. There the violence and obsessions of Conn’s past continue to haunt him as he marries and has a son, Gus. Gus Sheridan will follow his father into the police force, rising to head the city’s homicide division. He will also inherit his father’s daredevil toughness, dangerous obsessions — and a cool reserve softened only by his unspoken love for his own son, Chris. And it is Chris Sheridan, a young special prosecutor, who will close the circle of treachery and betrayal that began with his grandfather in Ireland. For Chris Sheridan will uncover, piece by piece, the shocking truth about his family’s past and even about Grace, the beautiful, sophisticated Boston woman he wants to marry. Grand in scope, All Our Yesterdays creates a living, breathing portrait of an era... and of two families who must come to terms with their heritage, and with the violence, the obsessions, and the deceit that both define and haunt them.