Conway is only a little girl when she first asks her mother who her unknown father was. Her mother spins a tall tale and says he was an Egyptian prince. At age eight, Conway demands the truth, and her mother says he was a Saudi medical student. When Conway asks again at age 13, Conway is told that her father was an abusive Brazilian guitarist. She hates her mother for spinning lies: “By the time I was older, by the time I made it into training college, it was because I thought maybe I knew what she had been doing, and I knew she had been right” (2).

Conway and Steve are rookie detective partners assigned to the Dublin Murder Squad. Conway has a permanent chip on her shoulder, and she’s managed to alienate most of her colleagues. Steve, a people-pleaser, is the only person on the squad who Conway likes. They’ve only been partners for a short while: “Steve feels like a friend, or something on the edge of it. But we’re still getting the hang of each other; we still have no guarantees” (9). O’Kelly gives the two detectives a high-profile murder case: An attractive woman named Aislinn has been struck and killed in her home, probably by her boyfriend.