Recently retired school head Maggie Detweiler and her old friend, socialite Hope Babbin, are heading to Maine. The trip—a five-day cooking class at the Oquossoc Mountain Inn resort—is a trial run to see if they travel well together, as they decide what to do with the rest of their lives. It is also a thinly veiled excuse to visit Buster, the local deputy sheriff, who is Maggie’s former student and Hope’s long-estranged son.

As their idyll is just beginning, the inn’s serenity is shattered by the arrival of Alexander and Lisa Antippas and Lisa’s actress sister, Glory. Loud, demanding, and rude, these Hollywood one-percenters quickly wreak havoc without even trying, upsetting the inn’s staff, dismaying the other guests, and igniting a flurry of speculation and gossip upstairs and down.

But the disruption soon turns deadly. When a suspicious late-night fire in the new wing is brought under control, Alexander’s charred body is found in the ashes.

Enter the deputy sheriff. A man who’s finally found his footing, Buster needs a big win. Maggie knows the justice system can be expedient—and that the difference between convicting the wrong person and the right one is too often determined by lazy police work and prosecutors with misplaced ambitions. To give Buster a hand that he isn’t sure he wants, and to prevent his bosses from making a hash of things before it’s too late, Maggie and Hope decide that there is a role for two experienced, curious, and sensible women to play in solving the crime.