Becca Reynolds is having a bad day. Her grandfather's lecture (#405: Eat a Healthy Diet or Die Not Trying) makes her late for her job at Daley & Palmer, the psychiatric group where she works as office manager – her title not theirs. But she knows her day has taken a really bad turn when she finds the firm's eight o'clock patient dead with Dr. Daley's letter opener opening the patient instead of the mail.

With the fledgling firm in danger of an early demise, Becca appoints herself the unofficial investigator since the police seem to be looking in all the wrong places.

The case takes Becca from the sordid depths of the Russian mafia to the upscale West End of Richmond, Virginia (known locally as River City) and even to her own back yard. In the course of the investigation, she finds herself in hot water, hot danger and with dreams of hot men.