Celebrity mystery writer Jessica Fletcher is riding out Schoolman College's first tornado in over sixty years. As a visiting professor, she is there to teach a creative writing class. But after two men choose to brave the tornado rather than take shelter and one of them is found dead--Jessica finds herself nagged by the question: Why?

The local police rule Professor Newmark's demise an accident. But Jessica thinks that someone on the sleepy midwestern campus has been taking lessons in murder. For starters, Newmark feared for his life at the time of his death. Was he just an eccentric academic--or was someone really after him? For persistent Jessica, there is no shortage of clues--or suspects. In fact, hidden behind Schoolman's ivy-covered walls are secrets that even Jessica could not have imagined...and enough motives for murder to produce more than one campus body.