Jessica stays with Irish friends in a hotel which mainly caters for salmon-fishermen, in Kilcleer, a Cork county town. The locals are divided between supporters of Walter Ickes's consortium for industrial innovation supported by Councilman Harold Early, and environmentalists, lead by Tom Dempsey, whose car was, according to him, tampered with causing him to run off the road. Edward Pryce is missing and blood is found by the police team lead by Sgt. Terence Boyle, who Jessica knows and trusts from an earlier case, and as Jessica guesses, his body is found in the wish-well. New York salmon-fisher Freddie Layton is arrested because his fingerprints were on the lethal stone.
—KGF Vissers