On a late spring day in Chapel Hill, two teenagers, Cliff and Timber, hop a freight train bound for Princeton so as to investigate the suspicious suicide of Cliff's older brother, Drake Raft, and unearth the treasure he had buried out in the Princeton woods. In addition to solving the mystery surrounding Drake's alleged death, Cliff wants to get his hands on some money so that he can set up a WWW server in his basement. Bored to death with his band and the Chapel Hill grunge scene, and dismayed with all the "neon-slacker-generation-x" books, Cliff feels it's time to start a literary revolution.

At Princeton their investigation introduces them to the feminist chairperson of the English department, Professor Sycorax. They discover that she had murdered the former chair of the department, Uncle Walt, and had made it look like he had killed himself.

Uncle Walt had been Drake's mentor, and with his death, Drake was cast into a deep depression. Sensing that foul play was involved, Drake broke into Professor Sycorax's home and found a manuscript which contained her confession of Uncle Walt's murder. Ryan, the student who was having an affair with Sycorax so as to get into the Harvard MFA program, found Drake reading the manuscript. Ryan, made jealous by the fact that Drake had been seeing Windy, a girl he himself had been pursuing, took the opportunity to fire shots at the intruder. Drake escaped, dropping the confession. Fearing for his life with the well-connected, ruthless Sycorax and the Princeton bureaucracy after him, Drake feigned suicide and took to living in the Princeton woods while plotting to avenge Uncle Walt's death. He buried his book of sonnets, THE AFTER DARK FIELD BOOK, and he sent the treasure map to Cliff.

On the way to digging up Drake's treasure in the Princeton Woods, Timber and Cliff happen upon Ryan while he is burying Sycorax's confession manuscript. They obtain it. Later on, while they are unearthing Drake's Sonnets, Ryan apprehends them at gun point. Believing that Drake's sonnets are Sycorax's murder confession, Ryan seizes them.

While investigating the mysterious suicides during their weekend stay at Princeton, Cliff and Timber organize a Montana Freedom Rock Concert to raise funds for their WWW server; they infiltrate Princeton's oldest secret society, The Princetonians After Dark; and they found one of their own, The Jolly Rogers. They declare war upon the Princetonians After Dark so as to lend their society a noble cause, thus ensuring that they can charge all the unsuspecting inductees exorbitant membership fees.

Cliff and Timber learn that Sycorax is planning on publishing Drake's sonnets under her own name. The novel culminates with a secret society show-down during which a fencing match between Drake (Princetonians of Darkness) and Ryan (The Jolly Rogers) is arranged. It is agreed that if Drake wins, he gets his sonnets back, and if Ryan wins, Sycorax reclaims her confessional manuscript. Sycorax arranges for the tip of Ryan's foil to be poisoned.

The novel is a salute to Shakespeare's HAMLET, and thus the ending conforms to that of HAMLET, with Drake and Ryan both being poisoned by the anointed foil. "Classics cannot stay closed upon the shelves," Drake says as he finally avenges Uncle Walt by slaying Sycorax before being overcome by the poison, "They shall forever re-enact themselves."

Cliff and Timber return to Chapel Hill with enough money to start a WWW server, and on it they publish Drake's sonnets.