With pride and without equal, Amy Jackson and best friends, Brit and Kristen, are the three nosiest seventeen-year-olds in their Great Smoky Mountains hometown of Sugar Liquor, North Carolina. Amy revels in the reputation she earned as a hot-shot detective when she, with the aid of Brit and Kristen, beat the police at solving a string of burglaries. She sees her crime-detecting success as a giant step toward her future career as an international investigative journalist. The police chief sees her as a naïve nuisance and issues a stern warning for her to steer clear of police business. When a tragic murder stuns the town, Amy ignores the chief's butt-out order and, with Kristen and Brit in tow, once again embraces her investigative persona. Operating on the sly, she gleans tips and clues through unorthodox snooping skills and elicits secrets and gossip from the victim's friends and foes. Will Amy's sleuthing lead her to the killer? Or will the chief, alert for signs of Amy's meddling, stop her before she, Brit and Kristen wind up in the killer's path?