John Wright's mind is playing tricks on him. He sees people he thinks he knows, but they are only strangers. His memory flickers in and out of focus. He has not seen his fiancee, Iris, in over three years. He fled their Los Angeles apartment one night after a fit of rage that may or may not have left her dead. He has been living off a small fortune he stole from Iris's rich, manipulative businessman father. He bides his time and waits for the police to find him and charge him with his lover's murder. Has he killed her? Is she really dead? Talented, clever, sophisticated Iris was his anchor, the one joy in his troubled, lonely life. At Harvard, she transformed John from a shy and awkward undergraduate into an elegant, self-assured man. But now she's gone, and his memories of her are obscured by a miasma of guilt and uncertainty. One bright day Iris returns. Is she real, or just a cruel figment of his addled brain? Only a journey into the deepest corners of his past will reveal the truth about John and Iris--about life and death and love, and secrets too dark to reveal.