Beatrice Steele has traded her etiquette-obsessed community of Swampshire for the big city of London, accompanied by her ever-trusty chaperone, Miss Bolton. They’ve settled in a lovely neighborhood, Sweetbriar, which is home to DS Investigations, the new office she opened with the prickly, annoyingly logical Inspector Drake to solve the city’s brutally thrilling crimes. However, nothing is turning out how Beatrice imagined it would, and she begins to wonder if she can become a true detective in a city that feels full of false promises. That is, until a string of murders thrusts Beatrice and Drake into the center of a scandal that pits the neighborhood’s wealthiest against the arts community. Beatrice must survive threats to her partnership, her business, and her place in society to break the case --- before it’s too late.

Beatrice Steele has never fit the definition of a true lady, according to the strict code of conduct that reigns in Swampshire, her small English township. Nevertheless, she lives a perfectly agreeable life with her marriage-scheming mother, prankster father and two younger sisters --- beautiful Louisa and forgettable Mary. But she harbors a dark secret: She is obsessed with the true crime cases she reads about in the newspaper. Eligible bachelor Edmund Croaksworth is set to attend the approaching autumnal ball, and the Steele family hopes that Louisa will steal his heart. However, when Croaksworth drops dead in the middle of a minuet, the evening descends into a frenzy of panic, fear and betrayal as it becomes clear they are trapped with a killer.