Detectives Lucas Baldwin and Mark Rawlings are surprised to find themselves on their way to the Grande National Hotel, the site of the annual Modern Language Association Conferenceto an academic conference, of all places!where the book-and-urine enshrouded body of Blake scholar D. Q. Manchester has been discovered and from which guest speaker H. M. Grace has vanished. As they investigate the suspicious death of one and the disappearance of another of the group of six faculty members who had come to consider themselves an island in a sea of educational malfeasance, their respect for these dedicated professors and scholarsand for education itself grows. They also come to realize that the supposedly hallowed halls of academia may be even more frightening than the decidedly mean streets of the city.