The American poet John Shade is dead; murdered. His last poem Pale Fire is put into a book together with a preface a lengthy commentary and notes by Shades editor Charles Kinbote. Known on campus as the Great Beaver Kinbote is haughty inquisitive intolerant but is he also mad bad and even dangerous As his wildly eccentric annotations slide into the personal and the fantastical Kinbote reveals perhaps more than he should. Nabokovs darkly witty richly inventive masterwork is a suspenseful whodunit a story of one upmanship and dubious penmanship and a glorious literary conundrum