After finding a beautiful co-ed's body in an eerie waterway called Lost Slough, Joseph Lawrence Conrad becomes an unlikely hero caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Accused of murdering his students, he's about to lose everything-his teaching career, his wife, his precocious five-year-old daughter, and his freedom. Detectives Ryan Dunn and Manuel Marino tighten the noose as they uncover links between Joe and the victims. Ultimately, Joe resorts to the literature he's teaching, borrowing from Hamlet to set a trap for the real killer. However, the result only puts people Joe loves in grave danger.

Scott Evans teaches at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, including a Fiction Writing Workshop and a course titled Crime, Punishment and Justice, which introduces first-year students to criminology from several perspectives. He edits a magazine called the Blue Moon Literary & Art Review, published in Davis, California, where he lives with his wife, Cynthia. Scott passes a mysterious waterway called Lost Slough during his commute and one cold morning, as an egret flew over the dark water, he thought, "That would be a good place to dump a body." And the plot of Tragic Flaws was born.