Seamus Joyce has got a few things on his mind.

He has just been appointed Acting Director of iDEA, the Irish Drug Enforcement Agency. His wife is in hospital, dying of an unidentified ailment. And he is starting to question the purpose of his own existence.

It's a tricky time at iDEA: an ambitious new Minister for Justice is anxious to secure a few big scalps in the Dublin drug trade, and Joyce is expected to put himself on the front line of the fight. Soon he begins to suspect that the police, in league with the Minister, are bending the rules - and he still doesn't quite understand what the rules are.

Why is money being paid into his bank account from an unnamed source in Liechtenstein? Why are his phones being tapped? And why are troubled schoolgirl and a diminutive nun accusing him of being at the heart of a lethal conspiracy