`At 2.20am on the morning of the 13th November 1952 the body of 19 year old Patricia Curran was carried into the surgery belonging to the family doctor. At first Dr Kenneth Wilson thought that she had been the victim of an acciental shooting. In fact a subsequent post-mortem revealed that she had been stabbed thirty-seven times.`

Tainted by scandal from the beguinning, rumour and innuendo pursued the Curran family: Judge Lance Curran, ambitious and driven, weighed down by gambling debt. Her brother, the ascetic Desmond, lost in religious zealotry. There were rumours of savage disagreements between Patricia and her mother. But most of the doubt concerned Patricia. Was she a spirited and confident proto-feminist, or a upper class demi- mondaine, demanding and promiscious? In a storm of publicity, rumour and counter-rumour, Scotland Yard dispatch Chief Inspector John Capstick who uncovers a complex web of deceit. Determined to secure a conviction, Capstick`s focus falls on a peripheral figure, a young army conscript, Iain Hay Gordon, who finds himself fighting for his life in the shadow of the gallows.

Eoin McNamee`s wonderful new novel is at once a gripping thriller and a danse macabre through a shadowy world of corruption and sexual intrigue. A darkly lyric narrative of white mischief in post-war Ireland, of false accusation and savage murder, presided over by the haunted, tragic figure of Patricia Curran.