Martin Arkenhout, a 17-year-old from Holland, takes a break from his studies to travel. Tall and skinny, Arkenhout looks and acts like any other youngster on vacation. However, he has a different idea of fun: murdering strangers along the way. He then steals their identities in an attempt to displace his own persona. Thus he can "invent himself" whenever the urge strikes. Yet one personality is harder to maintain than all the others - that of Professor Christopher Hart, an art teacher with a special affection for Dutch art and, apparently, a love for valuable manuscripts. The theft of one such manuscript gains the special attention of a private investigator, John Costa. Martin Arkenhout must now pay his own price for the professor's purported crime, and is hotly pursued across the globe.