Investigating the perpetrators of violent off-field incidents who compromised the public image of a star linebacker before kidnapping his young son, Spenser assembles a team of associates to comb through the underworld of Boston while the athlete weighs a controversial decision.

When paint chips from a valuable stolen painting arrive at the desk of a Boston journalist, Spenser is hired by a hopeful museum to delve into the black market art scene and investigate a cold-case art heist involving hidden secrets, jailhouse confessions and decades-old murders.

Private eye Spenser and his sidekick, Hawk, pursue a grifter who swindled a smitten woman out of nearly three hundred thousand dollars and conned everyone from the cable news shows to paramilitary contractors and the local cops.