Lilly Hawkins is a "shooter," which essentially means that she is a television news photographer. As she's riding back to the station, she sees a coroner's van going up a mountain and decides to follow it, knowing that it's headed toward a wild fire that has been sweeping through the California mountains. Lilly manages to get in the area before the roads are closed, and she's thrilled to be capturing the evacuations on film, as well as the growing inferno. She soon learns that the coroner was heading towards an accidental drowning victim in Elizabeth Lake, and she decides she can't be bothered with covering that story -- until she hears who the victim was. Lilly met Jessica Egan thirteen years ago, when they were teenagers. She can't reconcile the stories she's now hearing about Jessica with the person she knew then. Could one person really change that much?

Lilly has strict orders from the station manager to cover the fire and stay away from the drowning story, but Lilly begins juggling the two stories, often investigating Jessica's murder on the sly. Fortunately, she has the help of her boyfriend Rod, a reporter at the same station, who manages to get on the mountain immediately before the road closures are enforced and traffic flow is reversed for evacuation purposes. Together, they manage to do a little investigative journalism, cover the fires, and cover for each other with the boss. Lilly knows they must be getting close to the truth when the bullets start flying.

HOT, SHOT, & BOTHERED is a fun mystery to read. The beginning was a bit uneven, but the overall story is quite solid. The jacket blurb didn't quite mesh with the story, but I found this to be okay since I loved the story. Lilly's character is developed quite well, and she's easy to root for. She's a great balance of intelligent, independent woman, while still meshing well with her boyfriend and being appropriately worried when she discovers that he's been offered a job in another city. The mystery itself was interesting, and it was neither too easy to guess the culprit nor heavy-handed with red-herring characters.