Recently retired school head Maggie Detweiler and her old friend, socialite Hope Babbin, are heading to Maine for a five-day cooking class at the Oquossoc Mountain Inn resort. 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.

The inn’s serenity is soon 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 by upsetting the inn’s staff, dismaying the other guests, and igniting a flurry of speculation and gossip.

The discord turns deadly when a charred body is found in the ashes after a suspicious late-night fire.

Enter Deputy Babbin, who needs a big win. Maggie knows the justice system can misfire, and that the difference between convicting the wrong person and the right one is too often determined by prejudice, lazy police work, and prosecutors with misplaced ambitions. To give Buster a hand that he isn’t sure he wants, Maggie and Hope decide that there is a role here for two smart, curious women with a lot of life experience.