A journalist, Conway’s career is measured by 2000 newspaper columns, wherein he had with great delight managed to offend everyone at some time. At a press conference before the parade he outrages the parade chairman Donald Boyle, the NYC mayor, the IRA, the Catholic Church, Irish loyalists of every description and the GILA or Gay and Lesbian Irish Alliance.

During the parade, a bullet hits Conway, and there seemed to be an inexhaustible group of people who could have pulled the trigger. An arrest is made of Brendan Grady; a newly arrived member of an Irish band whose fingerprints are in the hotel room where the police believe the high-powered rifle perhaps used in the slaying was fired.

Brendan is a friend of Fidelma Muldoon, an illegal Irish emigrant, and she prevails upon her friend Danny O’Flaherty to investigate the murder in the hope of helping Brendan. This is Harrington’s third novel featuring Danny, an inner-city high school teacher. In the two previous novels, he was instrumental in the solving of a couple of murders and is presently dating Fildema.

Oddly enough, the shooting of Conway occurred just feet from where Danny and Fildema were watching the parade and he soon surfaces as the only credible eyewitness. Danny had seen a tall man in a costume with a mask extend a hand toward Conway, immediately before he fell. There was some conjecture as to whether or not this extension of a hand was in fact a small handgun with a silencer.

It does seem that the wound sustained from a high-powered rifle or a small handgun would be markedly different, which should have eliminated Brendan from the beginning. However, that problem is minor compared with some of the other weaknesses of the book.

There is clearly an assumption that the reader has read the prior books because the characters are not well developed. The part of the character that shows is merely the one necessary to advance the plot. The dialogue is choppy and at times pedestrian and cliché ridden. The scenes change quickly and the action is at such an uneven pace that it is often thorny to follow.

The nascent but shallow romance with Fildema could have been left out for all that it adds to the story.

The plus for the book is that the reader learns a lot about Ireland. Not only its history, but also the novel has fairly good summaries of the present day problems surrounding the Friday Peace Agreement as it relates to the IRA and loyalist groups.

--Thea Davis