In November 2015, the Cloth Bag Killer is caught trying to kidnap an eleven-year-old outside a pizzeria in Detroit. A customer pulls out a revolver to stop him but the killer is hit by a car as he tries to escape. Injured but alive, the Cloth Bag Killer is taken into police custody where he calmly confesses to killing seven children across the United States and dumping their remains in traditional cloth bag puppets. The narrator says he isn’t here to tell the story of the child who escaped, but rather that of the man behind the Cloth Bag Killer, who he first met in 1984 when they were both thirteen.The main events of the novel take place in Taipei between 1984-5, as three thirteen-year-old boys form a close friendship group in part to overcome their various family struggles. Our narrator, Xiaoyun, is dealing with the death of his older brother who got caught up in a gang fight. His mother’s depression becomes his father’s main priority and they go to visit her sister in the US, leaving Xiaoyun with Agang’s family in Taipei for the summer. Agang is Xiaoyun’s close friend from childhood whose parents own a popular noodle shop. Agang’s mother is having an affair and leaves his father for another man, prompting his father to go off the rails and let the noodle shop fall into disrepair. The final member of the group is Ajie, a bright classmate who starts out as Xiaoyun’s rival, but after a fight the two become friends. Ajie has a cruel stepfather who beats him regularly. The three boys spend their summer hanging out, listening to R&B and learning to breakdance. With Agang’s younger brother Dada in tow, they take on other dance groups around town and get into the occasional fight. They take up smoking, then they start stealing things and generally causing chaos in the old Chunghwa Market area. One day, Xiaoyun and Ajie are watching music videos when suddenly Ajie kisses Xiaoyun, who is outraged and later beats Ajie up. They put aside their differences and shift their focus to a new plan: murdering Ajie’s abusive stepfather.A few weeks earlier, about 200 vipers escaped from their cages at a butcher shop specialising in snake meat. Xiaoyun convinces the others that if they can get their hands on a live snake, they can make the death of Ajie’s stepfather look like an accident. They spend weeks planning the logistics and Xiaoyun manages to get a live snake from his brother’s ex-girlfriend whose family runs the butcher shop. However, on the day everything goes wrong and Agang’s father is killed by the snake instead. Agang is devastated and wants to confess their intention to murder to the police, Xiaoyun fights him over it and hits Agang with a brick. Dada sees them fighting and pushes Xiaoyun off the roof, giving him a brain injury from which he never fully recovers.The above story is interspersed with scenes between the Cloth Bag Killer and the lawyer who was once his childhood friend. After implying that Xiaoyun is the lawyer, it’s revealed that he is in fact the murderer and that Ajie is defending him in court out of a sense of responsibility for what happened when they were young. Xiaoyun’s brain injuries left him unable to differentiate between visions and reality. In 2019, Xiaoyun is finally executed by lethal injection, with Ajie beside him.