A woman is brutally murdered and the only suspect has fled the country. Garda Sergeant Stefan Gillespie is sent to New York to bring a killer home to face justice – but the man has already disappeared into Manhattan’s awesome vistas. Stefan is beguiled, exhilarated and troubled by this city buzzing with confidence, pride and ruthless opportunism, from skyscraper penthouses, to grimy backstreets, to the pulse-thumping jazz clubs of Harlem. The 1939 World Fair only heightens the noisy enthusiasm for a bright new future and the stark tensions of a city that seethes with anti-Semitism and segregation, a city whose links to the struggle for Irish independence are unbreakable, yet holds hidden danger for Ireland in a world on the edge of war. Stefan’s mission in New York becomes part of an increasingly personal struggle when an encounter with an old friend catapults him into a complex world of murder, conspiracy and terror. In a time when people must stand up for what they believe in, the stakes for Stefan Gillespie, and his country, couldn’t be higher.
