An American tourist is found bludgeoned to death in the trunk of his rented car. Minogue soon learns that there's more at stake here than the murder of a visitor to Ireland. Patrick Shaugnessy is the son of American multimillionaire and patron of many causes John Leyne. While Minogue and his colleagues struggle to assemble shards of information to map the way to Shaugnessy's killer, another body is discovered in a shallow grave close to the site of the latest antiquity theft. Old debts and the new booming Ireland seem to be a deadly mixture.