Miranda 'Rannie' Bookman—43, divorced mother of two, with a recent love life consisting of a long string of embarrassingly brief encounters—is beginning to feel like a dangling participle: connected to nothing. Her career as a copyeditor is down the toilet (she makes one little slip—a missing 'l' from the last word in the title of the Nancy Drew classic The Secret of the Old Clock—and suddenly she's Publishing Enemy #1!), so she's been forced to take any gig she can get. And that means giving tours at the Chapel School, the ultra-exclusive, ultra-expensive, private academy that her children attend. Certainly not the most interesting of employments . . . at least until someone stumbles across the dead body of the Director of College Admissions.

Investigating a murder was never in her job description, but with her soon-to-be-college-bound boy Nate a prime suspect, Rannie has little choice. Besides, who better to dot all the 'i's and cross all the 't's than a self-proclaimed 'language cop'? Her diligence might even lead her to a brand-new love. Or to a killer. Or to another corpse—hopefully not her own.