Showing results by publisher "Phoenix Books" in Police Procedurals

Police Chief Jesse Stone has a problem—actually, several problems: dead bodies keep turning up. Investigating a serial killer in an affluent suburban town is difficult, and with the added pressures from the town selectmen and media, the heat is turning up on Jesse. The harder these outside forces push against him, the more Jesse retreats into himself. Despite all the odds, he's convinced it is up to him alone to stop the killings.

The Paradise Men's Softball League has wrapped up another game, and Chief of Police Jesse Stone is lingering in the parking lot with his teammates, drinking beer, swapping stories of double plays and beautiful women in the late-summer twilight. But then someone makes a horrifying discovery at a nearby lake: At the water's edge, facedown, is something that used to be a girl.

A brutal serial killer known as "Dead Eyes" is lurking in the backyard of the famed Virginia FBI Profiling Unit. Despite the gifted profiling skills of Special Agent Karen Vail, the psychopath is always one step ahead with uncanny knowledge of the FBI's detailed strategy of pursuit. Threatening to derail the investigation and her career is Vail's contentious divorce from an abusive husband and an ugly custody battle. As Vail fights to find the killer before he murders more young women, she must battle forces determined to bring her down.

Spenser finds himself fighting for his life when he takes on a murder case for Ellis Alves, a Black man with a criminal record who says he was framed. From Boston's back streets to Manhattan's elite, Spenser and Hawk search for suspects. But when an assassin with a .22 puts Spenser in a coma, is the chance for justice dead?

Sunny Randall is a Boston P.I. and former cop, a college graduate, an aspiring painter, a divorcée, and the owner of a miniature bull terrier named Rosie. Hired by a wealthy family to locate their teenage daughter, Sunny is tested by the parents' preconceived notion of what a detective should be. With the help of underworld contacts, she tracks down the runaway Millicent, who has turned to prostitution. Rescuing her from a vicious pimp, Sunny finds herself the unlikely custodian of a difficult teenager when the girl refuses to return to her family.

Spenser will do anything for his long-time love, Susan, but finds himself with more than he bargained for when he agrees to help Susan's ex-husband fight sexual harassment charges. Spenser soon discovers he has more questions than answers as a body is found, a shadowy mob connection surfaces, and the P.I. is fighting a two-front war against some very bad men and an increasingly unpredictable Susan.

The hardworking single mother of young daughter, Joanna Brady still feels the acute pain of loneliness and loss, the hole that was left in her heart when her policeman husband was murdered. But Sheriff Brady is the law in Cochise County, and murder has shattered the small town's fragile peace. A local gun dealer has died violently, and his stock of high-powered weapons has been cleared out. When two more slayings follow soon after, suspicion falls upon rancher Alton Hosfield.

Jonas Piedmont Beaumont has had a hard life and learned at a young age how hard life can be. Two marriages, a treacherous battle with the bottle, assorted midlife and moral dilemmas, and a few decades as a homicide detective haven't convinced him otherwise. When Beau and his new partner Sue Danielson are assigned the murder of an elderly woman torched to death in her bed, Beau finds himself distracted by Sue's difficulties at home.

In 1832, 18-year-old Frankie Silver was charged with murdering her young husband. In 1833, she became the first woman in the state of North Carolina to be hanged for murder. But was she guilty? More than 100 years later, Tennessee sheriff Spencer Arrowood is determined to reveal the truth behind this unanswered question. A spellbinding story that sweeps from the drawing rooms of early aristocracy to the ruins of a one-room cabin deep in the Appalachian wilderness, The Ballad of Frankie Silver flawlessly weaves past and present, truth and fiction, folklore and legend.