Something is rotten at Hercules High School. Student Heather Sundergard has been caught cheating on the state's most prestigious scholarship exam. One of Heather's teachers, Carol Demeter, has been implicated--and fired by the school board. But Carol happens to be police chief Jim Otis. fianc?e. Otis sees the fine hand in this scam of teenage femme fatale Josie Dobbs. But Josie's "back east," in college.

Or is she?

Jim Otis' struggle to exonerate Carol sends him into his own small town's underworld and into the snakepit of school board meetings. His quest moves on to a dive bar in the state capitol to meet Carol's alleged secret lover and into the teeth of a brawl between the Konicek brothers. After staging a panty raid that might prove Carol's innocence, Otis is forced into a deadly cat-and-mouse game in a strange forest, pitted against the seductive and precocious girl who has been his nemesis since he arrived in Hercules.

--David Benjamin