Perhaps Quirke has been down among the dead too long. Lately the Dublin pathologist has suffered hallucinations and blackouts, and he fears the cause is a brain tumor. A specialist diagnoses an old head injury caused by a savage beating; all that’s needed is an extended rest. But when a body turns up, any possibility of that vanishes.

The corpse, discovered in a crashed car one hot June night, is assumed to be the victim of an accident or a suicide, but Quirke’s examination of the body leads him to believe otherwise. Then his daughter Phoebe gets a mysterious visit from an acquaintance, who later disappears. Before long, Quirke and his old friend Inspector Hackett find themselves deep in a shadowy world where one of the city’s most powerful men uses the cover of politics and religion to make obscene profits.