When the owner of a new restaurant is found hanging from a rope, it’s up to Poppy Markham to discover who sizzled his steak.

As a health inspector and former chef, Poppy Markham thought she’d seen it all—until she steps into Capital Punishment. The restaurant’s twisted concept—last meals of death row inmates—could be a hit only in outlandish Austin, Texas. But the macabre theme becomes all too real when co-owner Troy Sharpe is found dangling from a hangman’s noose in the cinder block dining room. Discovering that Troy was a hard-drinking jerk leads Poppy to the rub: if Troy had more enemies than a jail has bars, which one sent him to the land of rigor-mortised restaurateurs?