Virginia Davies has a lot going on in her life – a new marriage, new city, new job, a new play – and murder! She married her longtime boyfriend Dr. Andy Clark, then they moved from Orange County, California to Georgetown, Texas, where she took a job as a curator at the prestigious San Gabriel Museum.

Her main source of pride, her manuscript – Murder as a Community Project – was optioned for production as a play. Unfortunately, Virginia's propensity for finding trouble followed her from the west coast – at the first Georgetown Community Theater rehearsal she discovered one of the actors, a reporter for an area newspaper, with a knife stuck in his chest, and it's not a prop.

Dragged into the action-packed mystery by strange photographs and actors' antics, Virginia's husband is kidnapped to stop her from nosing around. Snooping around in her usual unorthodox manner, while people keep trying to kill her, she manages to rummage through trouble in Georgetown, Austin, and Williamson County, Texas – while befriending the police and the Mafia.