Kinsey Milhone investigates the death of sheriff's investigator Tom Newquist in the tiny California haven of Nota Lake.

When Gideon Turner is laid off from his job at a swanky firm that sells horses, he turns his passion for all things equestrian into a second career as a writer of mysteries set in the horse-racing world. As his second novel nears publication, a killer begins murdering people Gideon knows. The macabre thing is that the killer is following the plot of Gideon's own first novel. Gideon must find the killer before his wife, Bea, becomes a victim.

When one of the sheep in the author's herd turns out to be an unenthusiastic mother, the natural failure of something so basic as the maternal instinct sets Allport to wondering about parenting, "this most ordinary, most extraordinary of things." The result is this wide-ranging exploration of the nature and evolution of the relationship between parents and children. Fully conversant with the latest research in biology and animal behavior, the author turns a naturalist's observant eye upon the natural world of her backyard, and of human society as well. While such an exercise is second nature to someone with Allport's professional training, the lucidity of her prose and the clarity of her thought are such that any reader with the slightest interest in "parenting in the animal world and ours" will be eager to join her.