As such things are measured in Washington, Denise Burke has everything a woman of wit could want: two hip kids, a marriage carefully constructed to allow maximum mutual leeway with a husband smack in the center of Bill Clinton's inner circle, and a high-profile lover, the most eligible bachelor on Capitol Hill. Plus she's a best-selling author of true-crime books.

When her congressman lover urges Denise to look into an old murder in his home district - and then just as urgently begs her to drop the whole thing - her stubborn streak kicks in. And when he dies in flagrante with a D.C. call girl, her bullshit detector goes on red alert: The good congressman didn't have to pay for sex. But it's when death strikes a lot closer to home that Denise becomes a woman with a big-time problem. Someone is serious about getting her to drop the old case.