Paradise, Massachusetts, Police Chief Jesse Stone must deal in his own laconic way with the town's rights and wrongs, including a Peeping Town, the Paradise Free Swingers, and a firestorm of protests at the junior high school.

As a photographer with a broken leg, Stewart takes up the fine art of spying on his Greenwich Village neighbors during a summer heat wave. Things really begin to get hot when he suspects a salesman may have murdered his nagging wife and buried the body in a flower garden. He actively enlists the help of his girlfriend to investigate the highly suspicious chain of events. Events that ultimately lead to one of the most memorable and gripping endings...