Dean Cranston Fessing, dispatched from Wainscott University to investigate finances of the neighboring Museum of Man, has been murdered. Not only that, but his grisly remains bear the unmistakable mark of haute cuisine. The police are baffled, and the media have a field day, dragging the name of the venerable museum through the mud.

To get to the bottom of it all, and save his beloved museum from the University's institutional embrace, comes recording secretary Norman de Ratour, the most reluctant of heroes, the unlikeliest of sleuths. Disappointed in love thirty years ago, Norman lives a reclusive bachelor's existence, tormented by the memory of Elsbeth, and of his own timidity at a crucial amorous moment.

Aided by the e-mail missives of an anonymous informant, and thwarted at every turn by his politically ambitious boss, Norman is thrust to center stage and begins to investigate a long list of suspects. Along the way he uncovers a cannibal cult in the anthropology department, creative writing in the primate pavilion, and Nietzschean ambitions in the genetics lab.

It's a race to find the culprit, save the museum and reclaim his lost love before he himself winds up gracing the table of some fiendish gourmand.