Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, living in a small flat with his family on Faithful Place in Dublin's inner city. He and Rosie Daly planned to run away to London, get married, and break away from poverty and their old lives. But the night they were leaving, Rosie didn't show. Frank assumed that she dumped him and never went home again. Neither did Rosie. Now, twenty-two years, later Rosie's suitcase shows up in a derelict house on Faithful...

"Being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she's there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she's getting close to the breaking point. Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers' quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed...

When the body of his daughter's friend is brought to his autopsy table, Quirke is plunged into a world of corruption that takes him to the darkest corners of the Irish Church and State.--

"In the 1880s the Dublin Metropolitan Police classified crime in two distinct classes. Political crimes were classed as 'special,' whereas theft, robbery and even murder ... were known as 'ordinary.' [In] June 1887, the city swelters in a long summer heatwave, the criminal underworld simmers, and with it, the threat of nationalist violence is growing ... Then the mutilated bodies of a man and a child are discovered in Phoenix Park and Detective Sergeant...

"In Dublin, newly promoted detective inspector Joe Swallow's life looks to be taking a turn for the better. In addition to his promotion, he's settled into a comfortable arrangement with his landlady and paramour, Maria Walsh--that is, until his newfound peace is chaotically uprooted when a series of violent attacks against women lead to an outbreak of panic and fear. Swallow is drawn into the chase for a vicious serial murderer down Dublin's dark...