Beware of me, my love beware of the silent woman in the desert…

These are the words the Professor finds, scrawled in nail polish, above the mutilated corpse of a man.

She reports the crime to the police and becomes the first informant in an investigation led by the Detective, who has a newfound obsession with poetry. As the bodies of more men are discovered alongside cryptic lines of verse, it becomes clear that this is only one in a string of crimes – all connected, all with literary clues.

As the Professor becomes wrapped up in the murders, the boundaries of story – and of genre – break down. Can the Detective decipher the meaning of the poems in time to stop the spread of violence?