When Dr. Georges Moutte is found murdered, Judge Antoine Verlaque is stumped. Certainly, the director of theology at the Université d'Aix had his enemies. Moutte was just about to name the recipient of an elite fellowship as well as his own successor – a highly coveted position that includes a lavish apartment in a seventeenth-century mansion – when his lips were sealed permanently. Yet, Verlaque isn't convinced that any of the academics are capable of murder. Aided by his on-again, off-again girlfriend, law professor Marine Bonnet, Verlaque turns Provence upside down, uncovering a world far more complicated than university politics.