Cliff Reagon is a newspaper reporter for the Old Hickory Gazette in Sugar Creek, Indiana, and he is good at it. It is 1946, and World War II has mercifully ended. Cliff’s spunky younger sister, Bea, fresh out of journalism school, snagged a job alongside her brother at the newspaper. Less than a month after Bea joins the Gazette, Sugar Creek experiences a brutal murder― the first murder of a woman there in over thirty-five years. Clara Blystone, the victim, was a young single mother whose battered body was found inside an already infamous, long-neglected cemetery mausoleum. Despite caution from her brother, Bea occasionally slips out of her role as a print journalist and slides into the unofficial role of detective. Her amateur investigative work eventually pairs her with the murdered woman’s roommate, Gracie. Gracie, who barely graduated from high school, and according to a few folks around Sugar Creek, has a bit of “history.” In this dark-and-light, often humorous but sometimes disturbing, thriller, an unlikely friendship between the two polar-opposites develops. The two self-appointed sleuths make for an odd duo, but they are a duo that is hell-bent on finding the murderer. As should have been expected, Bea and Gracie find themselves up to their necks in danger before Sheriff Donald Pritchard can zero-in on the killer. Hickory County’s Sheriff Donald Pritchard, is the son of Zeke Pritchard, a former crooked Sheriff who years ago began his semi-retirement in Indianapolis. Donald has recently been handed his father’s badge for the second time thanks to elections controlled by Zeke. While the lawman may not be likable, he is damn good at what he does and, uncharacteristically, for the hardcore sheriff, this case is personal. Years ago, high-school-aged Donald Pritchard had a crush on classmate and now victim, Clara Blystone. This winding story begins on the streets of “Little Italy” in Chicago and wanders through Sugar Creek, Indiana, to a tense conclusion inside the gates of Shade Valley Cemetery.