A trucker stopping at a roadside rest station discovers the fully clothed body of a dead East Indian woman in the woods. An autopsy reveals that she has been strangled, she has an unusually high level of sedatives in her bloodstream and, mysteriously, there are several pairs of burn marks on her skin.

The bizarre murder of a world-renowned anthropologist over the Christmas holidays shocks staff and students at the university where she teaches. Police get a clue that a stranger described as a female Hulk was seen shortly before the murder. In a case stranger than fiction, the murderer turns out to be not whom she appears to be.