Professor Charles Haycock is dead from a hearty dose of his own heart medication. The mystery is not why Haycock was murdered—very few could stomach the woman-hating prof—but who did the deed. Estelle "Woody" Woodhaven, a private investigator hired to find the killer, naturally enlists the help of that indefatigable amateur sleuth, Kate Fansler. Together, they start to pull at the loose ends of the very tangled Clifton College English Department. The list of suspects is longer than the freshman survey reading list. And as the women defuse the host of literary landmines set out for them, Woody suspects they're only scratching the surface of a very large and sinister plot. . . .