A young psychotherapist addresses this account to an unexplained 'Misty' as she describes her experiences after she becomes a teacher at a small private school. All the characters she describes are flamboyant but the most important is her colleague Nick saint, with whom she falls in love. Nick knows nothing of his parents and believes himself to be the incarnation of Santa Claus. The two of them go in search of his parents and undercover several mysteries. The mannered writing style of this debut novel would prove to be a conscious artefact of the fictitious author but Brandreth's determination to display the extent of his knowledge of academic psychology impedes the flow of his narrative. ( )