Quirke is a haunted, hard-drinking pathologist stumbling through the brooding gloom of 1950s Dublin. It is a society of secrets and meanness, dominated by a rigid hierarchy―as Quirke is reminded of when he catches his well-connected brother-in-law faking morgue records.

The cause of this tampering is the corpse of a mysterious woman: Christine Falls. But who is she, and how did she die? Quirke’s hunt for the answers to these questions will draw him into a transatlantic conspiracy and pit him against some of Dublin’s most powerful forces, from the Catholic Church to members of his own family.