At first it appears a mugging gone horribly wrong—one man dead, and a woman left in a coma one Friday night in Washington, D.C. The woman is Arlington police detective Frank Mancini's niece, and lives in the boarding house run by retired FBI-agent-turned-landlady Ethel Fiona Crestwater. Ethel and Frank are old friends, and so she volunteers to investigate the crime on Frank's behalf, as his hands are tied by jurisdictional issues. Although in her mid-seventies, Ethel is no bumbling amateur sleuth; she's a seasoned pro with razor-sharp instincts and Bond-worthy skills. Together with her enthusiatic tech-savvy, double-first-cousin-twice-removed Jesse Cooper, the unlikely duo will face malicious back-stabbing political sycophants, conniving lobbyists, and a motivated assassin bent on removing the Chief Justice from the equation—along with Ethel, who stands defiantly between the hitman and his payday.