A manticore is a monster with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion...

The Canadian David Staunton enters Jungian analysis in Switzerland because of his father's strange death. (Was it an accident? Or suicide? Or homicide?) As the analysis proceeds, the manticore is among the symbols that emerge, and David learns surprising things not only about himself but also about his father, about the schoolmaster Dunstan Ramsay, about the libidinous Liesl, and about the warped and gifted Magnus Eisengrim.