As private detective Philip Knight and his brother Roger, a Catholic Studies professor, probe a series of threatening letters targeting Notre Dame, the campus is rocked by an explosion and the brothers search for an unknown villain.

With Notre Dame in an uproar over the university's disastrous football season, Roger Knight, professor of Catholic Studies, finds himself a marked man as he and his P.I. brother Philip launch separate investigations to put a stop to a campus conspiracy.

When David Williams returns to campus to renege on a pledge donation, one of his former classmates sends a letter confessing to the murder and secret burial of one of their closest friends decades ago. Roger and Philip set about the task of unearthing the body but discover a much bigger mystery.

When a man they discover suffering an apparent heart attack is later revealed to be a murder victim and a supporter of the University of Notre Dame, detectives Phil Knight and Jimmie Stewart learn that the man's rivals are on campus for the weekend.

Father Dowling confronts an ethical dilemma when one of his parishioners reveals information in confidence about a troubled marriage, and the parishioner's spouse later becomes the victim of a brutal hit-and-run "accident" that could be murder

In the 17th Father Dowling mystery, the plot deals with adoption and murder. At its center is a woman born out of wedlock. The mother gave her up for adoption and she may have been adopted by the father.

Enlisted by the head of a local family to help her niece relinquish her ambitions for more earthly pursuits, Father Dowling becomes enmeshed in the family's edgy interrelations, which are marked by an unsolved murder.