In every murderer s worst nightmare, Sam Jones is unleashed for her seventh crack at the crime world. It s New Year s Eve in the quiet village of Lesser Swinfold, and sculptor and involuntary sleuth Sam has arrived to celebrate with her boyfriend, Hugo. Sam s best friend, Tom, has taken a job in the village as a primary-school teacher in the hopes of meeting plenty of available, sex-hungry, single mothers. Unfortunately Hugo hates the countryside, Tom has fallen in love with a single mother who is less interested in him than she would be in a frontal lobotomy, and Sam is flirting with a twenty-two-year-old with the face of a fallen angel. So the discovery of a body stabbed forty times and tied to the village Christmas tree is an unwelcome complication, especially when Tom becomes the prime suspect. Distracted by the appalling shape of her love life, Sam s not in the best shape for tracking down the murderer before the local police haul her off to jail. And will Hugo ever talk to her again? "From the Trade Paperback edition.""