Professor Karen Pelletier has waited six years for a shot at tenure in the English Department of her small New England college. But when her rival, a favorite for the position, is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Pelletier is the prime suspect. As the criminal investigation gets underway, campus politics, private passions, and a killer on the loose combine to turn the world of academia upside down.

Like her heroine Karen Pelletier, Joanne Dobson is an English professor, having taught for many years at Fordham University, also at Amherst College and at Tufts University. She and her husband live in the New York City area and have three grown children. Unlike Karen, she has never been faced with an on-campus homicide, nor has she ever been called in as a consultant to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. But she has occasionally asked herself, "what if... ?"