Twelve-year-old Myrtle Hardcastle has a passion for justice and a Highly Unconventional obsession with criminal science. Armed with her father’s law books and her mum’s microscope, Myrtle studies toxicology, keeps abreast of the latest developments in crime scene analysis, and Observes her neighbors in the quiet village of Swinburne, England. When her next-door neighbor, a wealthy spinster and eccentric breeder of rare flowers, dies under Mysterious...

When the proprietor of Leighton's Mercantile is found dead on the morning his annual Christmas shop display is to be unveiled, it's clear a killer had revenge in mind. When the killer strikes again, each time manipulating the figures in the display to foretell the crime, Myrtle finds herself racing to uncover the long-buried facts of a cold case -- and the motivations of a modern murderer.