It is late December 1929. A few days before Christmas. Cyrus Skeen has concluded his case in The Pendulum, and Witnesses the Berlin project to assassinate a German envoy to America, but blame the killing on Skeen's friend, Mickey Kane, a top newspaper reporter for the city's Observer-World. It would thus complicate U.S.-German relations in the aftermath of the Versailles Treaty. The American "Young Plan," to reduce Germany's debt, has been rejected by the German public and by much of the country's political establishment. Then, on a quiet Thursday morning, a young boy appears and asks Skeen for his help to identify some of his teachers who have a "yen for boys." At first, Skeen thinks the boy is imagining things, but as he delves deeper he finds more than that the boy revealed. Incidentally, the cover illustration is in no way representative or suggestive of the subject of this novel.