The first title in the acclaimed and bestselling crime series featuring Jack Taylor, a disgraced former police detective from Galway. Mourning the death of his father, Jack is slowly drinking himself into oblivion when he is asked to investigate a teenage suicide.

Plunged into a dangerous confrontation with a powerful businessman and with the Irish police - The Guards - who have an unhealthy interest in Jack's past, he finds that all is not as simple as it at first seemed and a dark conspiracy unfolds.