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The Rizzoli & Isles renewed season has been confirmed by TNT following prolonged negotiations, while fans were worried about a cancellation.

Starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander, the Rizzoli drama is based on the novels by Tess Gerritsen, according to Fox News. The Isles run will consist of 18 episodes, whic is the the show’s largest single-season order to date. The series, which tapped Jan Nash to take over for creator and showrunner Janet Tamaro in season five, will return in early 2015.

Nash will return in the renewed season six, which will again return in the summer. Thus far, season five is averaging 7.6 million total viewers when factoring in seven days of DVR viewing, ranking the cop drama as the second-most-watched show in TNT history behind The Closer. The show is one of basic cable’s top five series every year among total viewers and was the top show on basic cable this past summer.

The negotiations for the series, which begins airing in syndication in fall 2015, came after TNT and TBS programming president Michael Wright exited the Turner-owned networks. Sources say that Wright was in the midst of renegotiating a new licensing deal with producers Warner Horizon Television for a two-season renewal that also included salary bumps for leads Harmon and Alexander, who are said to have negotiated together. That later changed, sources said, during negotiations after former Fox topper Kevin Reilly took over for Wright.

Insiders said the Rizzoli & Isles renewed season also came after USA Network expressed interest in picking up the series if a deal could not be reached with TNT. TNT denied that there was any sort of stalemate or that the show could have landed elsewhere. But it wouldn’t be surprising if USA Network tried to grab the show to improve their ratings.

The Rizzoli & Isles backstory is inspired by the novel The Apprentice, according to the New York Post. The Surgeon is the original novel in the series but Dr. Maura Isles’ character is not introduced until the second book. Jane Rizzoli also has a lesser role in The Surgeon.

Boston detective Jane Rizzoli was investigating a serial killer named Charles Hoyt some time before the series began. Hoyt, who was banned from medical school for fondling a corpse, used his vast medical knowledge to systematically torture and kill people, usually choosing couples so that he could induce the most fear into his victims. Rizzoli is able to find Hoyt’s location.

As Rizzoli is searching for him, she is hit in the back of the head and knocked unconscious. She is pinned to the floor by scalpels. As Rizzoli is waking up, we see Hoyt preparing to cut her throat.

Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles investigate a killer with Hoyt’s modus operandi, plus an interest in necrophilia. Rizzoli and Isles discover that the copycat was John Stark (Brendan McCarthy), a soldier who met Hoyt in medical school, had his identity erased for CIA black operations, and mimicked Hoyt’s MO in a killing spree during said operations. Meanwhile, Hoyt escapes from prison and rejoins his apprentice to continue in his killing.

Later Rizzoli’s home is broken into, and she is told by someone she thought was part of BPD that her neighbors had been killed; she rushes into the van to see the bodies but finds Hoyt instead. Hoyt and his apprentice knock Rizzoli out and kidnap her. When she wakes up they attempt to kill her, but she manages to disarm them by tasing them and impaling Hoyt in the eye with a flare.

In self-defense, she shoots the apprentice to death and when Hoyt reaches for her gun, she shoots him through the hands, giving him injuries similar to the ones he gave her. New twists are introduced in the renewed season a year later when they discover that a recent murder victim is actually the medical examiner’s previously unknown half-brother, resulting in her discovery that her father is notorious criminal Patrick Doyle.

Hoyt returns 18 months later through another apprentice, Lola, in “I’m Your Boogie Man” about two years later in the Rizzoli and Isles renewed season. Having murdered Lola’s abusive husband two years earlier, Hoyt uses her Stockholm syndrome to his advantage, and uses her to stalk Rizzoli. Lola seduces and captures Frankie Rizzoli before tying Jane up. She plans to kidnap Jane until Hoyt can escape from prison, but Rizzoli manages to distract Lola long enough for Frankie to kill Lola with her own revolver.

Hoyt returns again when he arranges for another inmate to be stabbed while he is dying of cancer, luring Jane into the prison so that he can taunt her about another unsolved murder he committed. While speaking to Jane in the prison infirmary Hoyt tells Jane to look at what he is reading, Tess Gerritsen’s novel The Silent Girl. Although Jane manages to find the bodies of his victims-the family of an old college professor of Hoyt’s who was unaware of his expulsion-Hoyt, aided by a third apprentice, manages to capture Jane and Maura Isles, only for Jane to beat Hoyt and then stab him when he and his apprentice try to kill Maura Isles.

In the show, Maura Isles is a forensic expert working at the Boston Police Department. She is described as a walking library, able to spout out facts, regardless of whether or not they are relevant to a case. She has a pet tortoise named Bass, after renowned forensic anthropologist William M. Bass.

While the Rizzoli Isles season gets renewed, the characters remain the same, notes The Inquisitr. Maura Isles still loves examining dead bodies, but she has a tendency to diagnose living people a little too often. She is the adopted, only child of a wealthy family.