Four shining stars for the Murder-By-Month Mystery series‘Tis the season for grinning sales-elves on TV and maddeningly jolly muzak. But for Mira James and other Battle Lake-area women, the holidays are marred by something far worse—a serial killer leaving candy canes as his calling card. His target? Thirty-something brunettes who look just like Mira. When a woman from her high school graduating class becomes the latest victim, Mira plows through a case of online dating turned deadly.

When Mira James moved to a small town in Minnesota, she thought she left muggings behind her...until she's jumped by two men in an alley. A third man saves her, but for all his trouble he's found frozen under an ice-covered lake. Meanwhile, Mira's job as a private eye in training has her tracking down the family that built the Prospect House, home of the town's new museum. Discovering a letter that dates back to 1865, Mira finds herself embroiled in a cold case of treachery and a hot case of drug trafficking that puts the whole town in danger.