Gifted thief Hush finds that she needs to change her ways to stay out of trouble, so when she is assigned to a job at Miz Tromp's Nursery, she learns that she is capable of taking away the pain of others, and teams up with her new friend Desiree to heal her town.

Describes forty-three crime puzzles, which the reader tries to solve with the aid of clues, codes, alibis, and other evidence.

The novel's heroine, Mary, is a teacher who moves from Indiana to Colorado and marries a local cowboy named Jim. A successful rancher, Jim finds himself the subject of malicious and false rumors that he is a cattle rustler and is murdered by vigilantes while in the sheriff's custody, leaving his widow the "administratrix" of his estate. To find Jim's murderers and avenge his death, Mary disguises herself as a cowboy and infiltrates the gang responsible for lynching her husband.

'I have spent almost 33 of the last 53 years in and out of prison, but mainly in. I was a juvenile offender back in the mid 1970s and went on to become an adult prisoner in the 1980s and beyond. My shortest prison sentence was 7 days (for criminal damage) and my longest sentence was life (for bank robbery and possession of firearms). I have 58 criminal convictions for everything from attempted theft to armed robbery and prison escape, and I was a career criminal for most of my life. What I do not know about criminal and prison slang could be written on the back of a postage stamp and still leave room for The Lord's Prayer ...' From ex-professional bank robber and bestselling author Noel Smith, this is the most authoritative dictionary of criminal slang out there - and an unmissable journey, through words, into the heart of the criminal world.