"Winter seems to have come early over Clare, Inspector Matt Minogue's home county on the west coast of Ireland. Soon it's All Souls Day, when the devout pray for souls' release from Purgatory. The morning fogs, the steady drizzle, the empty ocean close by - all form the bleak setting for Minogue's most peculiar investigation yet." "When Minogue returns to County Clare to help sort out his nephew's run-in with the law, a meeting with brilliant, eccentric IRA lawyer Alo Crossan convinces the inspector to stay for a while. Crossan wants Minogue to reopen the file of one Jamesy Bourke, a convicted murderer recently released from prison. The townspeople have scant sympathy for Bourke, who suffered a nervous breakdown - a lost soul indeed. Minogue himself is close to burnout, and this long-dead case strikes a chord in his beleaguered psyche. The inspector begins a quest, never guessing that he will be thwarted, mystified, and endangered in John Brady's most complex and moving novel to date."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved