Hildegarde Withers - schoolteacher and occasional detective - has just planned a grand European tour when Germany invades Poland. So she heads to Hollywood, trading the Louvre and the Vatican for the Brown Derby and La Brea tar pits. After just three days, she's offered a job as a technical adviser to a film of the Lizzie Borden story. The job is perfect, for no one knows murder like Miss Withers. On her first day, the screenwriter in the next office dies of an apparent broken neck. Now Miss Withers must contend with a producer who makes her third graders look grown up - and a killer every bit as vicious as Lizzie Borden.