On top of finding the two dead bodies, Queena Adler's marriage is crumbling, she's suspended from her university teaching job, and she just got her first hot flash. On the bright side, sudden unemployment gives her the perfect excuse to ditch her midlife crisis for an amateur murder investigation. Joining Queena are her best friend Sadie, Muir Beach's first female fire chief, and charming criminology professor Robert Kay, whose interest rocks her already rocky marriage.

 

When clues at the crime scene mirror Kabuki death tableaus, Queena’s previously "useless" degree in Japanese theater makes her uniquely able to decode the killer’s staging. The stakes escalate further as she and Kay uncover two more horrifyingly similar unsolved homicides—proving there is a serial killer on the loose with a flair for the dramatic. As Queena’s rabbit-holing pulls her into the killer’s orbit, survival hinges on her decades-old training and an unexpected pop-culture lifeline. If Queena doesn’t flip the script in time, she risks becoming the final act in a very macabre performance.