Hitchcock Sewell's just your average undertaker. Well, maybe he's a little better-looking than your average undertaker. And a bit of a wiseass. And his life might not be quite as quiet and dignified as one might imagine for a typical undertaker running a small family business in Baltimore. (Your typical undertaker doesn't, generally speaking, tend to play the lead in the local amateur theater production of 'Our Town, ' nor does he have such an unorthodox sleeping arrangement with his very beautiful, very eccentric ex-wife, Julia.).

But Hitch certainly isn't looking for trouble -- which arrives in the form of a beautiful, mysterious stranger calling herself Carolyn James and asking to make arrangements for her own funeral, who strides into Hitch's (relatively) ordinary life one fine spring day. And he's certainly not looking to solve a murder-which is what the femme fatale, who turns out to be a police woman named Kate Zabrieski, dumps in his lap when the real Carolyn James is found dead the next day. And he's definitely not looking to fall in love with Kate, which is of course what winds up happening ...

From Hitch's Baltimore waterfront neighborhood to a hopelessly unpronounceable village in Maine, Hitch and Kate's makeshift investigation leads from a trail of blackmail to police corruption, local politics, and more murder, ending with a twist no one -- not even Hitch -- could have anticipated. It's all quite a serious business of course, especially as Hitch himself becomes the target of a known killer. (But then, so is the business of burying people.).