The Christmas season should be a time for Goodwill Towards Man. And Woman. But some members of the local book club in Beaudin Trace, Missouri evidently aren't feeling very seasonal, for they trash the local author's Scottish cookbook...with her in attendance.

Opinions of the book don't stay at the meeting. Someone presents his/her critique personally, and the author is found dead the following day. That's bad enough, but to be assaulted with her own book is carrying editorializing a bit too far.

Emotions over the death punctuate the town like typos in a poor typist's manuscript. The killer should be bylined, booked, and sentenced! Fine, but who deleted the author along with the chance for a sequel?