When Professor Humberto Ossmann and Dr. Clematis Woodley, who heartily despised each other in life, are found together in a mortal embrace, Norman de Ratour knows that evil once again stalks the hallowed precincts of the Museum of Man.
It has been several years since the museum was wracked by what became known as the “cannibal murders.” Many of the same characters – Malachy Morin, Lieutenant Tracy of the Seaboard Police Department, Constance Brattle of Wainscott University's Oversight Committee, the Reverend Alfie Lopes, Elsbeth, now Norman's beloved wife, and Israel Landes, his devoted friend – play their parts as an unseemly conspiracy unfolds: A powerful aphrodisiac under development in the Genetics Lab is being used as a murder weapon.
Norman, now director of the museum, figuratively dons his deerstalker hat to help the Seaboard police find and bring the miscreants to justice. The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man takes black comedy to philosophical heights, exploring the human (and inhuman) condition and seeking to redeem it through humor in a novel that combines parody and murder mystery suspense....

Dean Cranston Fessing, dispatched from Wainscott University to investigate the finances of the neighboring Museum of Man, has been murdered. Not only that, but his grisly remains bear the unmistakable mark of preparation as haute cuisine. Norman de Ratour, museum recording secretary and unlikely sleuth, sets out to uncover a bubbling cauldron of clues in this hilarious satire of academic life and contemporary social issues, a stew of murder, cannibalism, political posturing. and high camp....