A body is in the library, but not just any library. A man is dead in the basement of Oxford's Bodleian Library, the first murder there in 500 years. The maintenance worker had a curious interest in old books and a more contemporary proclivity for gambling. Lewis and Hathaway's investigation takes them into the secrets and contrasts of Oxford life — the closed world of gambling support groups and the rarified arena of arts and literature. But when the murders start to stack up like books in the Bodleian and the surreal link seems to be the poet Shelley, Lewis and Hathaway scramble to get an education and catch a killer.