When newspaper owner and editor Bernadette "Bernie" O'Dea's house burns down on New Year's Eve with an unidentified body in the charred rubble - who may or may not be her missing tenant - it's clear the new year won't be nice and quiet after all.

Bernie is already navigating boyfriend and police chief Pete Novotny's increasingly challenging struggle with PTSD, so when the arson and murder investigation narrows its focus on her, she plunges into work trying to find an oasis of normalcy. Getting to the bottom of the local college's plans for expansion is just the ticket.

Or not.

What Bernie thought would be a simple story isn't simple at all, and she begins to uncover a dark conspiracy, with tentacles that reach to every corner of Redimere, including into Pete's troubled police department.

The farther Bernie digs, the more tragic, and ultimately deadly, the consequences.