A university campus is ordinarily sedate except for occasional student rebellions or athletic rivalries. One state school's calm, however, was broken by the unexpected death of its president and then murder of two prominent campus figures within the same week. The first victim, the alluring Coordinator for Student Activities, was strangled, and within days the leader of student government was killed by gunshot. Ron Hedrick, an English professor, is fishing with a buddy, Sheriff Dusty Rhoads, when the body of the first victim is dragged from a nearby lake. Hedrick learns further details from his twenty-year-old daughter who is a reporter for the campus newspaper. Various administrators also discuss the murders with him because of his committee assignment, and he hears salty talk bandied about by faculty colleagues at kaffee klatches in the Memorial Union. Intensive investigations by police uncover blots on personnel records of the victims but without hard evidence, the police are baffled. Prof Hedrick begins to form an idea gleaned from language used by the different characters. Is it possible that language could lead to the criminal?