FBI Special Agent Pendergast receives an invitation to a funeral and burial of family tutor M. Bertin, who had taught many subjects, including the dark arts to Aloysius and his twin brother, Diogenes. At the funeral home, along with his ward Constance Greene, he desecrates the tutor's body and discovers the name of a non-existent relative, who is supposedly interned in an obscure family mausoleum, which is connected by a long, creepy underground passage to the lost-forever tomb underneath the family's ancestral home, which burned down and was converted to a parking lot. Once there, they find a clever clue, which will be the subject of the next novel. ( )