Book overview
A picture torn from Playboy magazine, a missing Swiss Army Knife, and a prank gone terribly wrong conspire to make Christmas 1968 a deadly holiday.
In a small Central New York town, two mismatched souls forge an unlikely and ill-advised friendship over the Christmas school break. One is a charming if volatile thirteen-year-old sociopath named Jimmy Steuben. The other is his seventh-grade English teacher, twenty-four-year-old Patti Finch. She's reeling in the aftermath of the accidental death of the man she loved, Jimmy's favorite teacher, Rick Voohrees. As the new year approaches, Jimmy and Patti spend evenings together, eating pizza, talking till late in the night, and growing closer. They think they can keep their innocent friendship a secret, despite investigating police and a nosy reporter. But Jimmy doesn't know about Patti's clandestine love affair with Rick.
And-of course-Patti has no idea that it was Jimmy's prank that killed him.
