Marty MacAlister is no ordinary cop. Black, female, widowed and recently transplanted from Chicago to Lincoln Prairie, Illinois, she's got small-town attitudes to confront, kids to raise and a killer to stop. When eccentric Lauretta Dorsey is found murdered in her room at the Cramer Hotel, Marti and her partner, Matthew Jessenovik, are assigned to the case. The few clues Marti pieces together suggest that some runaway children were in the hotel and might have seen the killer on the night Dorsey died. Marti must find the kids before they become victims themselves.