Brookhills coffeehouse owner Maggy Thorsen has reluctantly travelled north with her business partner, Sarah Kingston, and chef, Tien Romano, to cater a crime-writing retreat. Although Maggy is no fan of the outdoors, Payne Lodge's remote location deep in Wisconsin's woods seems an ideal spot for their local writers' group to plot the perfect murder.

But even Maggy doesn't realize quite how perfect until a violent thunderstorm leaves the group stranded with no power or means of communication, and the retreat's organizer, Kate McNamara, is found dead in one of the guestrooms. It's no secret that Brookhills newspaper editor Kate delighted in stirring up trouble, but which of their number hated the woman enough to travel nearly four hundred miles north to kill her?