Lacey Smithsonian is stuck in a rut. She's confronted killers, saved lives, rescued homeless children, and recovered priceless jewels (which she didn't get to keep). But she's still stuck on the fashion beat at the third-string newspaper in Washington, D.C. (The City Fashion Forgot), and her journalism career is going nowhere fast. Career crisis: She needs a new beat, a hard news beat, a "serious" beat. What's a savvy reporter to do? Take a private eye class. Lacey plans to polish her investigative skills, learn to sleuth like a real PI (like her boyfriend, Vic Donovan), and maybe even catch a lead on a non-fashion-related news story or two, while keeping it all under cover. But that was before she stumbled over the haute-coutured corpse in the Jaguar, met the crazy students in her PI class, spent a girls' night out at the gun range, and failed Surveillance 101. All she wanted was a shot at a new beat, so why are people shooting at her? And can she hit the bull's eye before the killer shoots again?