One winter's night, bookseller Delaney Nichols and her coworker Hamlet are invited to a Burns Night dinner, a traditional Scottish celebration of the poet Robert Burns. The dinner takes place at Burns House itself, where it becomes clear that Delaney and Hamlet are to help make amends between Edwin, Delaney's boss, and one of the other invitees, who suspected Edwin for burning down his own bookshop 20 years ago. When the Burns House is torched and a body is found, though, Hamlet is accused of the crime, and in this seventh outing (after Deadly Editions), Delaney discovers that he might actually have a plausible motive.