A strange incident on the night of the senior prom changes John Fell's entire life, leading him to enroll in an exclusive private school under an assumed name.

Doctor Lasher, who has given his son everything he ever wanted, naturally suspects that the boy was pushed rather than jumped from the top of a building, but only a troublesome classmate really knows what happened

Searching for clues to the death of his best friend, Dib, Fell stumbles upon the diary of Lenny Last, who had vanished more than twenty years before, and a ventriloquist's evil dummy, who might play a key role in murder