Victoria Trumbull, the nonagenarian poet, columnist and police deputy of Martha's Vineyard, requires the services of the town's electrician. But he's behaving oddly. His former assistant, fired for bad behavior, has gone missing. Someone is making obscene phone calls to members of the local knitting group and Victoria suspects a connection. The first body is discovered in the book storage shed of the West Tisbury library. The mystery deepens when the electician's anxious wife learns his terrible secret. Then another victim turns up, stabbed with a knitting needle. Spry and spirited ninety-two-year-old Victoria, with her brilliant insight into the darker side of the human condition, finds clues connecting several people's sordid pasts. And she discovers that age is no hindrance when she's all that stands between a killer and her family.