Welcome to Litsy!

Former Montana cowgirl Jessica James is sleeping on a desk in the attic at the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University in the Chicago suburbs. She blames her advisor, Professor Wolfgang "Wolf" Schumtzig, "Preeminent Philosopher and World Class Dick-Head." When he's found dead in his office, her real education begins. Trying to determine the connection between the murder and date-rape drugs popular on campus, Jessica ends up drugged at a frat party, but not before her fellow feminist avengers gives the frat boys a taste of their own medicine. Her best friend's father, Dmitry Durchenko, is trying to live a normal life as a janitor at Northwestern's Philosophy Department. Twenty years ago, he escaped Russia with his life and part of his mafia boss father's fortune. When the fortune, including a famous Kandinsky, goes missing, he realizes everything changes, but nothing disappears. Obsessed with the painting and the clues it holds to his childhood, Dmitry will stop at nothing to get it back. Before it's too late, and one of them becomes the next victim, Jessica and Dmitry have to wrangle mobsters, lasso frat boys, and rope in a murderer who's read too much Existentialism. Together, the brooding Russian and the cowgirl philosopher learn that sometimes virtue is just the flip side of vice.