Paul Kelly is the manager of a successful pub in southeast London, but his life has become a constant drunken binge since his wife's death. When Paul's brother Johnny is murdered, their mother calls him home to the town in Ireland where he grew up. There, Paul and his friend Bumper Reilly undertake a wild, funny investigation into Johnny's death, which forces Paul to confront the legacy of his past and the direction of his future.

This "fine first novel," as Neil Plakey wrote in The Chicago Tribune, is "filled with the simple comedy of everyday life and warm moments of tenderness . . . Hard to put down and harder still to forget."