Robert B. Parker was the author of seventy books, including the legendary Spenser detective series, the novels featuring Chief Jesse Stone, and the acclaimed Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch westerns, as well as the Sunny Randall novels. Winner of the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award and long considered the undisputed dean of American crime fiction, he died in January 2010.

Michael Brandman, the award-winning producer of more than thirty motion pictures, collaborated with Robert B. Parker for years on movie projects, the Spenser TV movies, and the Jesse Stone series of TV movies starring Tom Selleck. Brandman cowrote the screenplays for Stone Cold, No Rumors, and Innocents Lost, and supervised the screenplay adaptations of Night Passage, Death in Paradise, and Sea Change. He and Selleck were executive producers of the entire series. Brandman lives in California.