When the blond, blue-eyed body of controversial Yale Law School Professor Amanda Fox is discovered on a deserted street in black inner-city New Haven with multiple stab wounds -- and a missing left hand -- thirty-year-old Economics Professor Nikki Chase rushes to the campus to comfort the dead woman's husband, her old friend Gary Fox. But when he becomes a prime suspect in the murder, Nikki finds herself turning detective again. Gary accuses Marcellus Tyler, a black Yale sophomore and football star, who was the last person to have seen Amanda alive. Tyler's subsequent arrest draws the anger of outspoken local black minister Leroy Saunders, and soon all of New Haven becomes polarized along racial lines.Moving among professors, student leaders, blue-blooded alumni and black activists, Nikki is drawn into a web of adultery, greed, and racial strife in the Gothic dormitories of Yale and the mean streets of New Haven. It takes her trademark tenacity -- along with some help from her friends back at Harvard -- to uncover the deadly secrets hidden behind Yale's ivy-covered walls.