Ceremony

The book opens with Spenser and Susan Silverman talking with the Kyles about their missing daughter, April. Mr. Kyle apparently saw her in the act of seducing a John, a man about his age. He's livid at the thought of his daughter working as a prostitute and voices his opinion loudly. Spenser is clearly not interested in working for Mr. Kyle at any price, but the pleadings of Susan Silverman and Mrs. Kyle persuade Spenser to take the job (which he does for the nominal fee of one dollar).

Spenser talks to a Smithfield, Mass. cop ( friend of Susan's named Cataldo) and gets a lead that some of April's old crowd might know something. Spenser literally strongarms a kid named Carl Hummel to find out where they think she might be: with a friend in Boston, Amy Gurwitz, who left town a few months before April did.

Spenser goes to see Amy. She is living in a three-story home with a middle-aged man named Mitchell Poitras and tries to look the part of a sophisticated well-to-do woman even though she is no more than sixteen. He gets no information from her, but is convinced she knows something about April. (It turns out that Mitchell Poitras is a high-ranking figure in the Massachusetts school system and deals with a lot of troubled youths. He is using his position to funnel troubled girls into prostitution).