Description: In Pickax City, "400 miles north of everywhere," Jim Qwilleran, the semiretired gentleman columnist for the Moose County Something, is content to court longtime gal pal Polly Duncan while overseeing his philanthropic Klingenschoen Fund, which is bankrolling the Pirate's Chest, a new bookstore built to replace an old landmark. The arrival of talented thespian Alden Wade, a handsome widower who's to play Jack Worthing in a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest, threatens to enliven the proceedings and add tension to Qwill and Polly's peculiar, passionless relationship, until Alden's sudden marriage to the local Hibbard House heiress. Preparations for the Wilde play's opening and references to the Hibbard House history that Qwill is writing don't have much to do with the unsolved murder of Alden's first wife via a sniper's bullet.