When a controversial English professor is found shot to death, Tres Navarre, P.I. and Ph.D., is the only local academic crazy enough to accept the emergency opening at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Police assure him they already have a suspect, so while they wrap up the open-and-shut case, all Tres has to do is teach three classes, grade on a curve and walk in a dead man's shoes. It should be an easy assignment, but one thing Tres doesn't do is easy. When the evidence in the case starts looking a little too perfect, when the killing doesn't stop, Tres takes on some extracurricular research into the heart of an assassin and lands in a high-stakes game of gangster honor on the darkest streets of San Antonio's West Side