April Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a local scandal in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin. Her friend, Phoebe Griffin, suspects the worst. Phoebe seeks out Quirke, her brilliant but erratic father, for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke uses his knowledge of the darker byways of the city to investigate April's disappearance.