When a divorced Botany professor with a traumatic past attends her daughter's move-in day at college with her ex and his new wife, a sniper interrupts the proceedings and, thanks to her quick thinking, she's able to shield her daughter, who is wounded but not killed - unlike the ex's new wife and another bystander. Clearly the shooting wasn't random - and she can't help but try to find out what happened. In alternate chapters, we meet a principled assassin whose husband was responsible for the shooting, hired by a rich man - and who apparently didn't kill the right person, so is in big trouble. Ren, the assassin, who is a sort of botanist herself, with poison her preferred weapon, is pregnant and becomes suspicious of her husband, who not only was hasty and unprepared when he took the job but isn't adhering to her strict moral code, to only kill people who deserve it. returnreturnThe writing is strong, the execution is sure-footed, and that and a couple of the characters' development, carried me to the end, even though the high-concept plot seemed both too clever and too preposterous. I'm also not fond of stories that depend on killers with a moral code who we're supposed to admire. Mixed feelings about this one.