A convicted murderess faces the death penalty. FBI investigator Poppy Rice, suffering from her usual insomnia, is sitting up late watching the news when a story piques her interest. Convicted axe-murderer, Rona Leigh Glueck is being interviewed, and in ten days' time will be the first woman to be executed in Texas since the Civil War. Poppy ponders on a close-up of Rona Leigh's delicate, childlike hands. Could a frail woman, only seventeen at the time, have physically committed these murders? With the reluctant support of her colleague and sometime lover, Joe Barnow, fearless Poppy reopens the investigation. Trawling through testimonies and the grisly crime-scene photographs, she must find the answer to one vital question...Does Rona Leigh deserve a certificate that will read: Death by Legal Homicide as Ordered by the State of Texas?