In an attempt to eclipse a scandal over the previous year’s Fourth of July festivities, the Merit County Board of Supervisors hires Annike McKinley and Events Unlimited to stage a bigger and better celebration. Words like that always bode trouble. Even so, Annike isn’t expecting to be confronted with the year-dead body of one of last year’s organizers.
She isn’t about to let a murder investigation interfere with the gala events she has planned, though. Aided by her old friends the SCOURGEs, she is soon immersed in a parade with improbable drill teams, a picnic, a talent show, a barbecue, a fireworks exhibit, a troupe of performing poodles and dachshunds which run amok—and more deaths. Amid all this chaos, Sheriff Owen Sarkisian struggles to catch the murderer before the killing spree continues.
And, since Sarkisian is dragging his feet on the way to the altar, Annike plots a crime of her own—kidnapping with intent to commit matrimony.
