By coincidence, I experienced a funny bit of synergy by reading this book and watching the show Bad Sisters at the same time. They’re both murder mysteries set in Ireland, and bled together slightly in my mind. I started to imagine the detective character in the book with the same appearance as the actor in the series. And because my ear had been hearing the spoken dialogue, I was able to mentally approximate the sound of the Irish accent while reading.

The novel is told from the perspective of Toby, and before the main mystery even kicks in, he gets assaulted by burglers breaking into his home, leaving him with a head injury. As he’s recovering at his fancy family home, his cousin’s kids accidentally discover a skeleton inside a tree in the yard. It shouldn’t be too much of a spoiler to say that the body belongs to someone from Toby’s high school days¹, and various members of his family—his uncle and his cousins—all become suspects. Including Toby himself.