The dog days of summer have come to Serenity, that quaint little Midwestern town tucked cozily into a bend of the mighty Mississippi River. As temperatures rise and days get longer, somebody's temper erupts. . .into cold-blooded murder!

Brandy Borne is pretty sure her "charmingly eccentric" mother, Vivian, didn't kill that viperous mousy-haired busybody Connie Grimes. Sure, the two women had a little scuffle in the antique clock repair shop the day before. And, okay, Vivian's prints were all over the murder weapon. And Mother has been off her meds lately. And then there's the small matter of her guilty plea. . .

While Mother blithely socializes with inmates and organizes a jailhouse theater group, a very pregnant Brandy trundles into a morass of questionable antiques and discovers a passel of suspects, all victims of the deceased's greedy schemes. As the clock ticks, and summer sizzles away, Brandy—with moral support from Sushi, her perky shih tzu—closes in on the real killer, only to find the killer may be closing in on her....