When Adeline Bertrand-Verdon, the haughty, conniving president of the Proust Association, is murdered, Inspector Jean-Pierre Foucheroux is called on to lead the investigation.

Soon Inspector Foucheroux is overwhelmed by a seemingly endless list of suspects: from her assistant to her colleagues, her fiancée to her lover, almost everyone Adeline knew had motive to kill her. Meanwhile, Gisele Dambert, the beautiful assistant with the royal blue eyes and more than a hint of mystery, is on her own search for the lost Proust notes that would allow her to finally enter the glittering world of the literary elite.

This clever, satirical novel presents a dazzling array of sharp, unscrupulous professors and scholars in the image-obsessed world of academia.

An assortment of suspects—the professor who plagiarizes his students' work, the manipulative director—bring intrigue and drama to the novel. Suspense and withering commentary on the morally questionable intellectual elite combine to form a clever mix of whodunit and satire.