Police Chief Cecil Megarry is the kind of cop who clears his throat in the morning with a shot of Bushmills. It gives him strength. And he needs all the strength he can get because he's also a cop who never quit a case. When Megarry hears about a double murder in Glencraigie, he fortifies himself with caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol and embarks on the kind of relentless pursuit that has wrecked his marriage and made him a pain in the neck to crooks and colleagues alike. He grills informers in grimy pubs, gently interrogates little old ladies over tea, and fends off an unsettling amount of pressure from his higher-ups. Shadowed by Northern Ireland's hostile politics, the case gets bigger with every clue that Megarry digs up. In the end, the solution to the case lies not at the bottom of one of this sordid pools of information, but in an encyclopedia entry in the public library. And to Megarry's alarm, the killer turns out to be much more powerful than anyone at Police Headquarters had imagined.