Department Chair Isabel Vittorio was flamboyant, difficult, sometimes brilliant, and skilled at ratcheting the animosities within her department. When she's found murdered at her desk, the university is in an uproar and faculty member Miriam Held is nervous about where this investigation will lead. Knowing she's a suspect -- Miriam lost the department chair job to Isabel and to add insult to injury, the two were former lovers -- Miriam wants the murderer discovered.

But politics at the university seem a little murkier than usual, and as Miriam digs into the goings on in her department, there are few who don't fall under suspicion. Bringing blood and mayhem into the Department of Literature and Rhetoric at Austin University seems to have triggered something dark in the department.

Homosexual liaisons, university politics, competitive professors and racial issues -- could Ms. Miller have concocted a brew more inclined to froth over and burn everyone? You'll enjoy the smart humor in this book -- although it leans somewhat toward the British style of writing where the characters seem just a little detached. I didn't quite believe the emotions of some -- but maybe that's just the university thing.