Augusto Javier Martínez, Spanish literature professor at a nondescript Midwest university, has been murdered. His body was found in the language lab, his throat slashed and his body mutilated. The local police, incompetent or uninterested, are clueless. Alma, an ex-private detective turned academic hired to investigate the murder by the sensationalist religion publisher that had sporadically employed professor Martínez, soon finds herself embroiled in the sordid side of the Midwestern town and the university's back-stabbing politics. This is a dual English and Spanish edition. Translation by John W. Warren.