The ten chapters of this novel seem at first to be a series of unrelated narratives, each written in a different style—indeed, in a different genre. The first is an obituary for a scientist and Nobel Prize winner, written by a colleague who clearly relishes his death—but the obituary itself is posthumously written! Early in the twentieth century, a train in the Scottish Highlands heads down the wrong track during a winter snowstorm, and the passengers are forced to abandon it, resulting in the death—or is it murder?—of one of them. An inane publisher's reader summarises the plot of a tacky hospital romance in which a young nurse is besotted by an older surgeon. But the toshy novel ends in a gory murder all too reminiscent of Jack the Ripper. And a report on an academic controversy explodes into a scandal of plagiarism, shattered reputations, paranoia, and suicide—or is it murder in disguise? All the stories, it becomes clear, are variations on a single theme: someone working in science, medicine, literature, or academia, becomes obsessed with the success of a rival and plots to destroy him. But the attempt backfires and, like the scorpion that stings itself to death when it attacks its prey, the schemer becomes a victim of his own plot. The betrayer and the betrayed change places in an intricate dance of revenge and deception.