In Broken Harbour, a ghost estate outside Dublin, two children and their father are dead. Scorcher Kennedy is given the case and at first he thinks it's simple: Pat Spain was a casualty of the recession, so he killed his children, and himself. But there are too many inexplicable details and the evidence is pointing in two directions at once. Scorcher's finding that the neat compartments of his life are now rapidly breaking down, and the sudden tangle of work and family is putting both at risk.