Reporter Seamus Ryle follows a tip-off that a dog has been shot on Dun Laoghaire pier but misses an exclusive story about the drowning in the harbour of up and coming politician Maurice Clark.
Determined to make sense of the politician's death - and to retrieve his flagging career - his pursuit of the story leads him to Clark's secret life, a suave American miner, the IRA, and the machinations of 1970s Irish politics and diplomacy.
He finds himself chasing the story of his career but learns one of the hard lessons of journalism's illusions.