1950s Dublin. A battered body discovered floating in a canal is quickly identified as Jimmy Minor, an up-and-coming investigative journalist for the Clarion and a good friend to Phoebe, the daughter of pathologist Quirke.

Determined to find Jimmy’s killer, Quirke enlists his sometime partner, Inspector Hackett. As they dig deeper into the stories Jimmy was pursuing and the secrets he was poised to reveal, and Quirke is haunted by the memories of his own grim childhood in a priest-run orphanage, the two men will see just how far the Church and its supporters will go to protect their own interests.