"The noose was on his pillow, the dark rope starkly outlined against the crisp linen case ..."

Massachusetts caterer and minister's wife Faith Fairchild is back in the twelfth delectable mystery by award-winning author Katherine Hall Page. The incomparable ex-New Yorker's investigative prowess is put to its most stringent test when twisted hatred and blind bigotry become ingredients for murder.

THE BODY IN THE BONFIRE

Taking advantage of the January doldrums in the catering business, Faith goes undercover at Mansfield Academy, a prestigious prep school, after learning about anonymous racist attacks against senior, Daryl Martin. During the school's Project Term, she volunteers to teach Cooking for Idiots, and soon learns more about the darker side of adolescence and the academic in-fighting at Mansfield than she wants to know. Someone, determined to undermine her inquiries, tampers with the ingredients for her cooking demonstrations. Then the incinerated remains of Faith's prime suspect are discovered in the smoldering ashes of the traditional Project Term. It's not mischief but murder!

The headmaster's wife, an expert on Russian art... and men; the history teacher with a cultlike following; the loner, junior Zach Cohen, hacker extraordinaire; and Internet obsessed freshman Danny Miller, the son of Faith's best friend and neighbor, are all connected, but how? Faith frantically struggles to make sense of it, all too aware of the killer's deadly presence tracking her every move. It's a race to save Mansfield and her own life.