Life at Copper University in Michigan's Upper Peninsula has been good for Professor of Victorian literature Maddie Temple, but the school year is about to get off to a deadly start. Maddie's first day of school is marred by the death of a student who fell from the library's upper floors. First on the scene, she discovers that the student, Cheryl Crawford, was an English major. Meanwhile, Flo Andrews, the ambitious English Coordinator, makes the rest of the department's life hell with petty demands. The university has other problems as well: the elderly Chairman, Malcolm Driscoll, is incensed at the huge amounts of money channeled into SWINC, the new complex for the handicapped, when the rest of the university is pinching pennies. When Malcolm fails to arrive at school one morning, Maddie finds him at home in bed, blind and paralyzed.