"Lavender blue, dilly dilly" Song lyrics

Get out your shillelagh, sprinkle four leaf clovers around your easy chair and get ready for a dramatic ride to Belfast in the 1980s.

Sean Duffy is a Catholic in the Protestant RCY (Royal Ulster Constabulary). After being forced out of his job because he crossed the wrong people, he's visited by the M 15.

Dermot McCann is an IRZ master bomber and has just escaped from Maze Prison. M 15 believe that since Duffy knew McCann from their school days, he's the best chance they have of catching McCann before he begins his bombing attacks.

As a police officer, Duffy isn't welcome in Belfast but then meets a woman who strikes a deal. She'll give up McCann in return for Duffy's reopening the case to find the killer of the woman's daughter. The daughter died in a questionable manner inside a locked put. Police claim an accident but the woman knows it was murder.

Duffy investigates and we witness poverty stricken Belfast and and police anxiety at what McCann is up to. Time is running short and a major event is approaching. There is to be a Conservative Party Conference in Brighton and Mrs. Thatcher is scheduled to be a speaker. This would be an ideal target for McCann.

The descriptions of life in Northern Ireland is a treat. A locked room mystery and a clock running down as suspense builds is just what the doctor ordered for mystery fans.