When an old Jesuit Mission House in Carthage, Ohio, is nominated for National Landmark status, the committee sends a private investigator to get to the bottom of the hostile letters they’ve received. Arriving in Carthage is Marian Warner, a New York PI whose life was dented by the bombing death—years ago—of her radical boyfriend. The only man with any staying power in her life is Charlie Levitan, the editor of the Carthage newspaper, whose relationship with her includes a long personal history. The day before Marian arrives, an older man nobody in town recognizes turns up dead in the Mission House. Soon Marian discovers that the identity of the murdered man implicates every key player in the fight over the fate of the Mission House. But for her it gets personal when Charlie’s lover, a local jazz singer, is found murdered on the property of a powerful landmark preservationist, Jack Girard. What connects the two deaths? Why is a key witness avoiding her? How can she discover the truth in a town where hostilities go public, but secrets are so closely guarded? When Marian finally unmasks a cunning killer, it’s at the expense of the defenses it's taken her years to erect.

Five months after the events of No Mistaking Death, it’s back to Carthage, Ohio, for private investigator Marian Warner. This time she’s been hired to look into the disappearance of a beautiful, young courier for the local hospital lab…who turns up strangled. During the course of the murder investigation, Marian works her way down the list of doctors on the victim’s route as a lab courier, discovering that one of them, an obstetrician, is being sued for medical malpractice. On a hunch that the crime and the court case are connected, Marian sits in on the trial, where she gets a potent introduction to medical malpractice litigation. Soon, she comes to realize that her old friend, Charlie Levitan, editor of the local paper, is slanting his editorials to boost sales, and the murder investigation begins to feel personal. Who was the dead woman blowing off when she was overheard on the phone the night of her disappearance? Why is a blank birth certificate among the dead woman’s personal effects? Trips, pricey furniture—was the victim a blackmailer? In her hunt for the killer, Marian survives courtroom scenes, expert witnesses, Grange Ladies, man trouble, physician meltdown, watering hole locals, and—when she gets close to the truth—an attack on her life.