Ellie and her cousin, Carla, both in their early twenties, rent a house in Redwood Estates, a hamlet in the Santa Cruz mountains near Los Gatos. About the same time, a series of gruesome murders begin there. The victims are not only killed, but impaled, sometimes left dangling. From a series of notes, actually bad poetry, Ellie figures out the first letters of the names of the victims are spelling the word murder. She becomes quite worried that the E in murder might be might be herself. Sleuthing her way along, she cannot be sure she is not in mortal danger. The sheriff thinks she is on a ridiculous escapade, but an earlier set of killings in Oregon she becomes aware of (known as the Hangman Murders) convinces her she is on the right track.