Lying in Wait

In Dublin in 1980, the judge Andrew Fitzsimons and his wife Lydia bury a young woman's body in the garden of their family estate, Avalon. The woman is Annie Doyle, twenty-two, a sex worker Andrew killed. Lydia insists on hiding it rather than reporting him.

Lydia's overriding concern is her teenage son, Laurence, and the family's standing in Dublin. She manages the cover-up while Andrew comes apart under the weight of what he did. Annie's sister Karen refuses to let the disappearance go unanswered, and her search draws her, unknowingly, toward the Fitzsimonses. Annie's daughter Marnie, given up for adoption years earlier, is pulled into the same widening circle.

Laurence notices far more than his mother credits him for. His fascination with the dead woman and her family grows into something closer to obsession than grief. It puts the whole cover-up at risk.

Told from the alternating perspectives of Lydia, Karen and Laurence, this Irish domestic noir cares less about who killed Annie Doyle than why. It asks what a mother will do to keep her son from finding out.