When a controversial English professor is found shot dead, the University of Texas at San Antonio needs someone willing to fill a sudden, dangerous vacancy. Tres Navarre, a private investigator with a doctorate, is one of the few local academics reckless enough to take the position, stepping into a teaching post whose recent holders have met violent ends. What is presented as an open-and-shut killing soon refuses to stay simple. As Tres juggles classes and an investigation, he uncovers connections reaching far beyond the campus: a grieving widow and her young son, a man long suspected of an earlier murder, the rituals and rivalries of San Antonio youth gangs, and a family business in the carnival-ride trade that brushes against the South Texas heroin trade. The deeper Tres digs, the more the violence closes in around him and the people he is trying to protect. The novel widens the series' scope into questions of revenge, family history, and the cost of buried secrets, while keeping Tres's characteristic wit and his uneasy balance between scholarship and street-level danger. Riordan again uses San Antonio's culture and contradictions as more than scenery, tying the mystery to the city's social fault lines.