[1] Seventeen-year-old Dickory Dock, an art-school student in Greenwich Village, answers an ad for a job as a painter's assistant at Number 12 Cobble Lane.

She befriends Garson's companion, a deaf, mentally handicapped man with the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaffe; her fellow student, George Washington III; and the Chief of Detectives of the NYPD, Joseph P. Quinn.

Meanwhile, Dickory learns more about the histories, motives and identities of all the people in and around Number 12 Cobble Lane.

The book deals in shifting or hidden identities, crime, loss, and the meaning and purpose of art.

Unlike that book, it does not feature an epilogue in which the characters' lives are shown to improve due to the events of the plot.