Search - Night Passage (Jesse Stone, Bk 1)

I like this series by Parker, maybe even better than the Spenser books.

If you missed the origin of Parker's "new" hero, Jesse Stone, chief of police in Paradise, Massachusetts, this is where it begins. As usual, Parker is witty, suspenseful and dark in turns, all leading to a late-night page-turner.

good characters

Jesse Stone is fired from the LAPD because of his alcoholism, and he is hired as the new sherrif of Paradise, MA, despite a drunken interview (or perhaps because of it). Newly divorced Jesse heads across the country to Paradise and soon discovers the irony of the town's name, while town leaders begin to worry about what they had thought would be the "right" choice for new sherrif. A thoughtful, literate book, Night Passage is the first of Robert Parker's new series with Jesse Stone.

Good read, the start of the Jesse Stone series.