Carolyn Archer, the cookbook and mystery author featured in Veronica Ross's two previous mysteries, is only feeling friendly and kind when she invites Gracie, who claims to be a childhood friend, up to Meredith, Ontario, to spend Christmas with her and her husband's family. Grace is charming, generous, and a troublemaker from the moment she arrives, drinking to excess, flirting with husbands, and disappearing into the night with Carolyn's sister-in-law's fianc, a doctor. Within twenty-four hours, Gracie is lying in the hospital near death, and Carolyn is forced to consider everyone around her with suspicious eyes.