There’s no fun in fund-raiser for Judith McMonigle Flynn when she donates an overnight stay at Hillside Manor for the parish school’s annual auction and the winning bid goes to the persnickety Paine family. Then her husband Joe’s latest surveillance job ends abruptly when an insurance fraud suspect is blown away. Unfortunately the gun belongs to Joe, who finds himself in a jail cell while Judith tries to find what’s left of her mind-and the real killer.

But Joe’s dilemma and the unbearable Paines aren’t Judith’s only problems. Her cantankerous mother, Gertrude, has agreed to let a wealthy parishioner stable a horse in her tool-shed apartment; Cousin Renie is trying to force-feed her loathsome Shrimp Dump recipe to the parish cookbook fund-raising committee; and neighbor Arlene Rankers wants to know why some parish school kids, including her grandson, are sick after the weekly hamburger lunch. What else could possibly go wrong On the other hand, at Hillside Manor, what can possibly go right