In a hamlet twenty-five miles east of Brooklyn the summer after the Nazis surrendered, Billy Hartman is murdered while on a bicycle ride through a heavily wooded preserve with his best friend Isaac Sawicki. Isaac escapes, but instead of going to get help, he goes to the movies. Still, Ginness Barrett, a reprobate high school senior, two years ahead of Billy and Isaac, is convicted on the weight of Isaac's eyewitness testimony, and the Nazi dagger...