After decades of dereliction and inner-city neglect, Barrack Street, Cork is finally being excavated. The work uncovers the skeletal remains of six men, scattered around the site, their hands and feet all bound, all clearly killed violently, but many decades, even centuries, ago.

When a seventh body is found, Detective Garda Alice McCann knows immediately this one is different. It's female, for a start, and considerably more recent. Who was she? And who killed her?

Alice is determined to find the truth and bring the killer to justice - and, desperately seeking a way back to who she used to be, she also senses that this might be the case to do it.

But powerful forces are determined to stop her. Cork is small, with all kinds of hidden connections, and plenty of people who used to be friends, who now live very different lives... But their shared history unites them. And their secrets.