To shy, book loving Professor Fineas Steele, his beloved office, overflowing library and pipe are his world… until the morning his life is turned upside down by a secret he’s guarded for almost thirty years. For decades, Fineas has been protecting a dead man’s secret - an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a much loved, dashing national hero. A secret on which Fineas has built his life, career and professor’s tenure. When news of a carved granite skull and a sea captain's lucky escape from a cannibal tribe turn up on the front page of the city's newspaper, Fineas must make a decision. Does he risk everything and expose the lies of the man who made him what he is? Or does he undertake a perilous journey to solve the mystery behind the skull's makers and a tribe of cannibals who never really existed?