The man standing at the funeral in bubble-gum pink hair is P.J. Crowe. His career as a detective is in tatters - he's facing dismissal, vilified by the press and his wife's about to leave. Lying low in a small seaside town he spots a โHelp Wantedโ ad in the kitchen of a local cafรฉ. It offers him an escape from the public and his spiralling mental health - and it's where Thea Farrell worked โ until she was found dead at sea.
And herein lies the problem: Thea was an Olympic medallist, silver for swimming and Croweโs burned-out synapses are starting to join the dots โ it wasn't his case, but his copโs senses tell him that Thea wasnโt the drowning kind.
And the suspect may well be in the congregation.
Pius John Crowe is a Garda Inspector at Dublin Murder Metropolitan. He is in the midst of a mid-life crisis. Discovering his wife of sixteen years has been having an affair and overloaded with a grisly caseload, he snaps during his sonโs U-14โs soccer game, hospitalising the opposition coach. His timing couldnโt be worse. Newly-appointed Minister of Justice, Noreen Garland, is keen to make her mark and with the public and press baying for blood, decides to make an example of him.
As a result, Crowe suffers a complete mental breakdown. A retired colleague and mentor, Quigley, offers him a bedsit in Roscarrig; โa break by the sea would help.โ But Crowe isnโt the only reason Quigley is in Roscarrig, heโs there to give a heads-up to a senior Dublin criminal that his life is in danger from rival city gangs, Teflon D. Heโs hoping to mark time by lying low in the picturesque town by the sea until the dust settles.
Crowe takes a job as a kitchen porter; the back kitchen of the Boogie-Woogie Cafรฉ offers him anonymity. A new waitress starts the same day, Thea Farrell. Thea has Down Syndrome but is determined not to let this hold her back. She has a great week until she goes missing. Crowe joins in the search and two weeks later Thea is found dead at sea.
But in Croweโs fragmented mind, something doesnโt add up. His instincts, honed on thirty years of police work, tell him there was more to this than an accidental drowning. Enlisting the help of a local librarian and kayaker, Clodagh Robinson, they row out to Inishcarrig.
Because Thea Farrell wasn't the drowning kind.
Genre: Mystery/Thriller