Pius John Crowe is a Garda Inspector at Dublin Murder Metropolitan. He is in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Discovering his wife of sixteen years has been having an affair and overloaded with a grisly caseload, he snaps during his son's U-14's soccer game, hospitalising the opposition coach. His timing couldn't be worse. Newly-appointed Minister of Justice, Noreen Garland, is keen to make her mark and with the public and press baying for blood, decides to make an example of him.As a result, Crowe suffers a complete mental breakdown. A retired colleague and mentor, Quigley, offers him a bedsit in Roscarrig; "a break by the sea would help." But Crowe isn't the only reason Quigley is in Roscarrig, he's there to give a heads-up to a senior Dublin criminal that his life is in danger from rival city gangs, Teflon D. He's hoping to mark time by lying low in the picturesque town by the sea until the dust settles.Crowe takes a job as a kitchen porter; the back kitchen of the Boogie-Woogie Cafe offers him anonymity. A new waitress starts the same day, Thea Farrell. Thea has Down Syndrome but is determined not to let this hold her back. She has a great week until she goes missing. Crowe joins in the search and two weeks later Thea is found dead at sea.But in Crowe's fragmented mind, something doesn't add up. His instincts, honed on thirty years of police work, tell him there was more to this than an accidental drowning. Enlisting the help of a local librarian and kayaker, Clodagh Robinson, they row out to Inishcarrig.Because Thea Farrell wasn't the drowning kind.