In late summer, the Dingle peninsula is thronged with tourists drawn to County Kerry’s dark mountains and deep, lush valleys. For Irish vet Dimpna Wilde, who has returned to run her family’s practice after years away, home is a beautiful but complicated place-especially when it becomes the setting for a brutal murder. In Dimpna Wilde’s veterinary practice, an imminent meteor shower and the watch parties that are planned all over Dingle have taken over the usual gossip. But there are also matters nearer at hand to discuss-including the ragtag caravan of young people selling wares by the roadside and the shocking death of Chris Henderson, an elderly local, in a hit-and-run. Just hours before his death, Henderson had stormed into the garda station, complaining loudly about the caravan’s occupants causing noise and disruption. One of their members is Brigid Sweeney, a beautiful young woman who later turns up at Dimpna’s practice, splattered in blood with an injured hare tucked into her jacket, claiming that a mysterious stranger has been trying to obtain a lucky rabbit’s foot. Matters worsen on the night of the meteor shower when Dimpna finds Brigid’s dead body tied to a tree, a rabbit’s foot tied to her severed left hand. The rabbit’s foot, the severed hand, the coinciding meteor shower-the deeper Dimpna and Detective Inspector Cormac O’Brien investigate, the more ominous the signs seem to be, laced with a warning that Dimpna fears it will prove fatal to overlook.
