P.I. Bertrand McAbee, former classics professor, has a knack for finding trouble in unlikely places. Baden College in Iowa is a pretty famous center of higher education. But a problem haunts the campus, a string of disappearances over many years. McAbee is hired as a substitute classics professor and has one semester to find out whether or not the disappearances are sinister in nature. What he finds will bring him to the brink of death.