In the eighth installment of Karen Harper+s highly respected Elizabeth I mystery series, the lucrative invention of starch takes the English fashion world by storm. This commodity, vital to making the enormous and very stiff ruffs worn around the necks of Elizabethan elite, triggers the murder of the royal starcher. When a second woman is drowned, and then a third, the queen fears she too might lose her life-for intrigue at Elizabeth+s court always remains the fatal fashion.