After Nikki Chase -- a smart, ambitious, attractive black economics professor -- stumbles over her friend Ella's body during a blackout in a classroom building, she finds herself plunged into the investigation of her death. In the process she uncovers some of Harvard's most deeply buried secrets.

Nikki learns that plenty of people could have wanted Ella dead. There's the debonair -- and married -- new Harvard president Leo Barrett. Many thought Leo and Ella were lovers, and now he's looking awfully guilty. The Chairman of the Economics Department suddenly, suspiciously, has a lot of money. And Ella's radical, Afrocentric ex-husband had apparently been blackmailing her.

With the help of Ella's two true friends, Nikki sets out to unravel the mystery -- and the complications of her own love life. Proving that love can be murder, she drives toward the shocking conclusion that will turn all of Harvard on its ear.