After six Dan Delaney mysteries following a Kiwi family through the 20th century, the story comes full circle during the fragile beginnings of the 1995 Northern Irish ceasefire. The Delaney family are touring Ireland in search of their relations connected to a convict. In the process they confront ancient enmities. Dan is now 79, which is also the age of the author. In County Cork car theft and a clumsy horse frustrate, but Dan likes the Clonakilty black pudding and an IRA song about Derry. In Dublin his daughter is almost killed in a grenade attack outside the Abbey Theatre. In Belfast he is caught up in violent clashes between Protestants and Catholics. His mother’s wrong-side-of-the-blanket relations in Derry bequeath disinheritance hassles and an old foe aims to make them terminal. David McGill draws on his diaries of travel around Ireland and a journalistic assignment in the Falls Road, Belfast, at the 1970 flashpoint of the Troubles. He throws in his abiding love for Irish folk music and literature, and Guinness.