In The Ferryman Will Be There, Ellis Portal is recruited by Toronto police detective Matt West to help after a famous movie director, filming in Toronto, is murdered in full view of fans as he arrives to attend a premiere, and his teenage daughter disappears immediately afterward. The search and the solving of the crime take Ellis from the glamorous film world into the violent nether worlds of the drug trade and the exploitation and trafficking in women.

His search for the murder victim's missing daughter also takes him into the urban haunts of the homeless and to caves in the Don River Valley, the wilderness preserve that runs through the heart of Toronto and was the setting of Aubert's first Ellis Portal mystery, Free Reign. Ellis knew these surroundings well from the days, following his fall from respectability as judge, when he lived among the homeless himself for awhile.