The story opens with the gruesome discovery of the decapitated body of a gifted translator Gloria Harrison. Delacour finds herself participating in the investigation, if only as an observer, in the company of Detective Superintendent Northrup Rilsky. As the mystery unfolds, Delacour veers away from Rilsky's investigation, setting off on a trail that leads to the real killer.

Kristeva uses the classic thriller genre to convey some new and disturbing thoughts on the themes pervading her work as a linguist and philosopher. While Stephanie Delacour probes a brilliant gallery of suspects, we read between the lines some of the sorrows and dilemmas of Kristeva's life and work: motherhood and the complex relationship between mother and child; art and music; psychoanalysis; mourning and melancholia; language; the powers of horror; and the hostility aroused by a competent, gifted, and attractive woman who is at once a devoted mother and capable of sexual passion.