On Thanksgiving morning, Finlay “Finn” Donovan holds a funeral for Christopher, her children’s goldfish. Finn accidentally overfed the goldfish, and she is irritated that her ex-husband, Steven Donovan, will likely use this as evidence of her carelessness in their ongoing custody battle over four-year-old Delia and toddler Zach. 

To her relief, Steven is unaware of her recent adventures. In the previous book (Finlay Donovan Is Killing It), a woman overheard a conversation between Finn and her literary agent about her romantic suspense novel. Believing that Finn was plotting an actual murder, the woman, Patricia Mickler, assumed that Finn was a contract killer and offered her money to kill her mob-affiliated husband, Harris. Her husband was killed—by someone else—while in Finn’s van, and Finn and her nanny, Veronica “Vero” Ruiz, buried the body. Patricia passed Finn’s name to a friend, Irina Borovkov. When Irina’s husband, also mob affiliated, was also killed—again, not by Finn—Irina and Patricia rewarded Finn. At the end of the first novel, they offered her cash and some information: Someone has taken out a hit on Steven in an online forum.