The story begins with the discovery of a skeleton in the woods behind a small New England college during the Thanksgiving holiday. The medical examiner informs the police that the victim was definitely male, definitely murdered, but not the person whose wallet was found with the body. The Dean of Students becomes a suspect in the eyes of Lieutenant Harding, who is in charge of the investigation. But the Dean disappears, his study is ransacked, and he is found murdered. The investigation takes the reader from Boulder, Colorado to the mountains of Canada. The Boston police almost catch up to the perpetrator, but he slips through their net, and begins a run through Maine and into Vermont.