Lily is a cleaning woman in the small town of Shake­speare, Arkansas. A cleaner with a traumatic past, who erects high walls around herself and works out at the gym and the dojo fervently. One morning, she opens up the gym to find a body­builder whose larynx has been crushed by a laden barbell. Tensions are already high over the murder of a young black man, and racist literature starts appearing everywhere, followed by a bombing at a black church. Lily falls in with a private detective who is trying to get to the bottom of the hate literature and eventually gets to the bottom of the case.

Harris writes with great insight into her spiky character, making her compelling and sym­pa­thet­ic. The plot moves along briskly, leading to a satisfying if un­sur­pris­ing conclusion.

This is the second book in the Lily Bard mysteries. Like all the books, it stands on its own.