Amy Creighton has her life arranged just about the way she likes it—a successful career as a free-lance editor, hobbies she enjoys, and good friends in the small town of Granton, Maine. Then she uncovers a body in a mill shed while gathering mulch for her strawberry plants. With her gardener's eye she takes in the scene of the corpse. Amy Crighton brings the best of the independent Mainer to her investigation of murder in Granton, sparing no one and nothing to get at the truth. A solid sixty years old, she never flinches in the face of danger

Freelance book editor Amy Creighton wants to enjoy her flower and vegetable gardens, swimming in the pond, and summer in Maine. Her plans are derailed when local children find a bag of antique jewels, and then a reclusive fellow gardener goes missing. The best witnesses to Carlton Kalloch's disappearance are a pair of eccentric maiden sisters whose old fashion notions of propriety keep them from sharing what they've learned through spying on their neighbor. Can Amy, with her deep knowledge of her small Maine town, persuade them to talk? Can her knowledge of gardening and gardener's habits help the police? The quiet of her rural summer, and a visit with an old friend, are seriously disrupted when Amy makes a shocking find in the missing man's compost bin.