When the body of a teenage girl is found floating in a local lake, Stone must get to the bottom of the mysterious crime. He discovers that she was troubled, pregnant and estranged from her parents, who didn't even bother to report that she was missing.

This relates how Jesse Stone, a boozy former cop, originally become police chief of the small seaside town of Paradise, Massachusetts. His investigation of a domestic-violence case results in the exposure not only of some citizens' dirty laundry, but also of a money-laundering scheme.