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.