Bob Wilson is a lawyer with a house in the suburbs, a beautiful wife, and a predictable life. Then he agrees to represent a neighborhood couple in what looks like an open-and-shut custody case. But no sooner do the Wilsons take in fourteen-year-old Diana Esterbrook than Bob must ask himself some trouble questions. Is Diana a computer genius ... or a dangerously disturbed adolescent? Why is his house being bugged? Who is the mysterious man in black? And what about Diana's birth mother, a convicted kidnapper just released from prison? Wilson's quest for answers will lead him to an enigmatic private detective, a meek professor with dreams of immortality, and finally to the secrets of a discipline called Thaumatomathematics - a strange blend of magic and science where death becomes the key to beatific ecstasy.