As deputy medical examiner and homicide detective respectively, newlyweds Mattie Winston and Steve Hurley are dispatched to a grisly crime scene at the Grizzly Motel, a seedy joint for illicit liaisons on the outskirts of Sorenson, Wisconsin. A man and woman are found dead next to each other in bed in what initially appears to be a grim but straightforward murder-suicide. An affair gone sour? But as the forensic evidence is gathered and autopsies...

Death is never pretty, and deputy coroner Mattie Winston's latest case is no exception. But this victim certainly was strikingly beautiful--before someone stuck that knife into her chest. Mattie knows everyone in the charmingly small town of Sorenson, Wisconsin, so the deceased is definitely a stranger from out of town. If a woman this attractive had moved into town, the news would have surely hit the gossip mill in record time. So what was the victim...

Sorenson, Wisconsin's deputy coroner Mattie Winston takes on the murder of Bernie Chase, the president of Twilight Nursing Home's board of directors, who was found with a mysterious substance on his body and had been suspected by some of offing the home's more expensive residents.

Deputy coroner Mattie Winston investigates a real estate developer's murder while hunting for Detective Hurley's missing teenage daughter.