Sam Hayes relishes her job as gossip columnist for her father's small-town paper, The Corner News. After all, she's naturally snoopy. But her days of reporting on local recipes and tea parties suddenly take on a new dimension when residents of friendly Cotter's Corner start falling victim to an unknown killer. Sam quickly takes her journalistic oath to heart, and leaps--feet first--into tracking down the killer. The first victim is one of her friends, and the local sheriff doesn't seem to have the skill to solve the baffling case. When Sam's girlhood crush suddenly steps back into her life and offers to help her in her quest, not even the admonitions of her overly protective father and her outrageous mother (who arrives for a "short" visit) can sway Sam from investigating the murders. As far as she's concerned, she is the town's official "snoop" and she takes her job seriously. As the bodies pile up, Sam and her cohorts probe deeper into the mystery and, eventually, the young reporter runs into a devious and unexpected killer.