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?

Translated by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers