Robert Brown Parker (September 17, 1932 – January 18, 2010) was an American crime writer. His most famous works were the novels about the private detective Spenser. ABC television network developed the television series Spenser: For Hire based on the character in the late 1980s; a series of TV movies based on the character were also produced. His works incorporate encyclopedic knowledge of the Boston metropolitan area. Parker was 77 when he died of a heart attack at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts; discovered at his desk by his wife Joan, he had been working on a novel. The Spenser novels have been cited by critics and bestselling authors such as Robert Crais, Harlan Coben and Dennis Lehane as not only influencing their own work but reviving and changing the detective genre.

Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1956 Parker married Joan H. Parker, whom he claimed to have met as a toddler at a birthday party. They spent their childhoods in the same neighborhood.

After earning a BA degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Parker served as a soldier in the US Army Infantry in the Korean War. In 1957, he earned his Master's degree in English literature from Boston University and then worked in advertising and technical writing until 1962. Parker received a PhD in English literature from Boston University in 1971. His dissertation, titled "The Violent Hero, Wilderness Heritage and Urban Reality," discussed the exploits of fictional private-eye heroes created by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald.

Titus B. Welliver (born March 12, 1961) is an American actor. He is best known for his recurring roles on the television shows Deadwood, Lost, Sons of Anarchy and The Good Wife. His most notable films are Gone Baby Gone and The Town.

Welliver was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Norma (née Cripps), a fashion illustrator, and the famous landscape painter Neil Welliver. He studied drama at New York University in the early 1980s before his film and television career began to take shape.

Welliver has worked on several film projects, including The Doors, Rough Riders, Mulholland Falls, Twisted, Biker Boyz, and Assault on Precinct 13.

He played Al Capone in the movie Mobsters, had a recurring role as a doctor on the television show NYPD Blue, and was one of the stars of the CBS police drama Brooklyn South. Moreover, Welliver is well-known for playing the semi-regular character Silas Adams on the HBO series Deadwood, as well as for his prominent role as Lionel McCready in Ben Affleck's Gone Baby Gone. He is a longtime friend of actor Laurence Fishburne, with whom he appeared in Fishburne's directorial debut Once in the Life.

Ace Atkins (born 1970) is an American journalist and author. Atkins worked as a crime reporter in the newsroom of The Tampa Tribune before he published his first novel, Crossroad Blues, in 1998. He became a full-time novelist at the age of 30.

While at the Tribune, Atkins earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination for a feature series based on his investigation into a forgotten murder of the 1950s. The story became the core of his critically acclaimed novel, White Shadow, which was commented on positively by noted authors and critics. In his next novels, Wicked City and Devil’s Garden, Atkins continued this kind of story-telling, a style that was compared to that of Dennis Lehane and George Pelecanos.

Devil’s Garden, Wicked City, and White Shadow are all very personal books for Atkins, all set in his former homes: San Francisco, where he lived as a child; Alabama, his family’s home and where he was born and went to college; and Tampa, where he embarked on his career as a writer. Each novel contains bits of himself – friends and colleagues he once knew, people he respected or admired, family members, and personal heroes. In Devil’s Garden, Atkins explores the early life of one of those heroes: Dashiell Hammett, the originator of the hard-boiled crime novel. As a Pinkerton Agency detective, Hammett investigated the rape and manslaughter case against early Hollywood star Roscoe Arbuckle, one of the most sensational trials of the 20th Century. Atkins' 2010 novel Infamous is based on the 1933 Charles Urschel kidnapping and subsequent misadventures of the gangster spouses George "Machine Gun" and Kathryn Kelly.

Jesse Stone (November 16, 1901 – April 1, 1999) was an American rhythm and blues musician and songwriter whose influence spanned a wide range of genres. He also used the pseudonyms Charles Calhoun and Chuck Calhoun.

Ahmet Ertegün once stated that "Jesse Stone did more to develop the basic rock 'n' roll sound than anybody else."

Born in Atchison, Kansas, United States, Stone grew up in Kansas where he was influenced by a wide array of styles. He came from a musical family who put on minstrel shows, and performed with a trained dog act at the age of 4. By 1926 he had formed a group, the Blue Serenaders, and cut his first record, "Starvation Blues", for Okeh Records in 1927. For the next few years he worked as a pianist and arranger in Kansas City, recording with Julia Lee among others, and then in the 1930s organised a larger orchestra.

Duke Ellington got Stone's orchestra booked at the Cotton Club in 1936, and Ellington put Stone up free of charge in his apartment for four months. Over the next few years Stone worked as a bandleader at the Apollo Theatre, and more widely in Harlem as a songwriter and arranger, with Chick Webb's band (which included Louis Jordan), Jimmie Lunceford, and many others. He made some recordings under his own name in the 1930s and 1940s.

Bob Jennings is President of Lean Management Inc., a consulting company focused on senior management methods and execution. Prior to starting his own company he was President of EFCO Corp., a world leader in the design and supply of forms for concrete construction, with operations in twelve countries.

A native of Des Moines, Iowa, Jennings received his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa and his MBA degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Jennings joined EFCO in 1981 as a sales representative based in Santiago, Chile. Promotions and responsibility changes took him and his family to Dallas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and ultimately Des Moines, Iowa. In 1993 he was named a senior vice president in charge of sales, service and international operations. He was named chief operating officer in 2001 and President in 2002.

Jennings’s was influential in taking EFCO from a domestic company of 400 employees to a multinational company of 1200 employees. The expansion came with new products, acquisitions, emphasis on employee training and development, and geographic growth that extended into many countries. He holds five patents, has participated in many of the world’s largest construction projects and has been published in various trade magazines. Jennings has become known for his expertise in overcoming hardships and making adversity an asset. He has addressed this topic in the book The Adversity Paradox, an Unconventional Guide to Uncommon Business Success which he co-authored with J. Barry Griswell. The book was released April, 2009. Many newspapers, radio shows and blogs have recognized Griswell and Jennings, with their research, as experts on how adversity can create success.