In this one, Antoinette Conway takes centre stage, working with partner Steve Moran a few months after the events of The Secret Place on an investigation that quickly twists to call into question the motives and loyalties of her fellow Dublin murder squad members. Events move fast and Conway is a smart, gritty character whose flaws and strengths are both apparent without being laboured (similarly, the rest of her life outside work, including how it sets up, disposes of, and then has her deploy to her own benefit the disappearance of her own father), and whose narration plays well into the book's general interest in subjectivity of perspective. The vast majority of the action plays out in a series of interview scenes which more than hold the interest as people's apparent motives gradually appear, or in some cases only seem to.
