When a dead body turns up right in the mid le of the fiction stacks, the police are baffled. But Helma Zukas, who never fails to make note of the slightest deviation from the norm of everyday life, is tracking some baffling questions of her own. With the help of her not-so-proper best friend, Ruth, a six-foot-tall bohemian artist with a nose for gossip and a penchant for getting into trouble, the two are soon in hot pursuit of the truth... and getting lose enough to find they're about to become the killer's next victims.