Sixteen-year-old Amanda Burton is thrilled to be spending the summer in New York City at her glamorous uncle John's apartment in the Dakota while her parents are off visiting Tibet. It's 1924, the decade is roaring, and she's out on the town every night with her father's flamboyant younger brother--seeing Broadway shows, going to fancy restaurants and speakeasies, meeting John's rich and famous friends, and even an occasional gangster.

It's all great fun--until the morning she stumbles upon her uncle dead on the floor with a hatchet blade buried in his skull. And with Amanda as the prime murder suspect, the New York City cops consider the case as good as closed.

Luckily the hapless teen has an old ally in town: the infamous--albeit acquitted--alleged axe murderess Lizzie Borden. Miss Lizzie and her new pal, the renowned acerbic wit Dorothy Parker, are on the job faster than you can say, "Forty whacks." But trolling the glittering New York night scene and underworld for a killer can be a dangerous occupation for an old lady with a shady past, a sharp-witted literary icon, and a teenager with a history of violently losing relatives--especially when they keep turning up dead bodies.