Feisty retired math teacher Esbeth Walters has proven her mettle as a sleuth, making her unpopular with the local law. But it's the kind of folksy, no-nonsense help a tough Texan named Boose needs to catch the con artists who swindled his elderly momma. As Esbeth investigates, she's drawn into some suspicious retirement-home deaths and the murder of a local man, which was made to look like suicide.With the unexpected help of former forensic pathologist Gardner Burke, an AWOL rest-home resident, Esbeth's razor-sharp mind tackles a slew of swindlers, mob hit men, a psychopathic nurse and the FBI, all converging on the dusty Texas town of Fearing. And it means Esbeth must now calculate her own odds of surviving double crosses, danger…and sudden death.