In the Woods

“A Shadow Behind” — a new novel from the Dublin Cycle of the queen of Irish detective fiction.

Antoinette Conway and Stephen Moran, who brilliantly solved a murder in the novel “The Secret Place,” are now official partners. In the murder unit they keep them “under lock and key,” assigning only run-of-the-mill cases of domestic violence and paperwork. But one day they’re sent on a simple, at first glance, call: a woman has been killed, and everything seems obvious—an unremarkable lovers’ quarrel that ended in a random tragedy. Yet examining the crime scene reveals enough oddities. And the farther they go, the more entangled it becomes. The victim’s life—a girl who seemed ordinary—hid a multitude of secrets and surprises. The new investigation turns into a full-blown paranoia: Antoinette is certain this case will be fatal for her personally, that she’s being set up and disposed of—at best. She has to conduct the case with constant caution—what if someone is listening in, what if someone is watching? The partners are sure that a banal “domestic matter” will lead them to a serious conspiracy, but they don’t know that their intricate theories will lead them even further—to a place where every word may be a lie and every lie may be the truth.