After getting an early morning call from Queens attorney Angelo Manetti, Tom Newberry and his former NYPD partner Barry Noonan head to Riker's Island to question Curtis Moore, an Army veteran of the Vietnam War who is accused of committing a savage murder in Far Rockaway Queens on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, twelve thousand miles away in Westmeath, Ireland, Brendan McCabe, a man who earned his stripes with the IRA, leaves home on his twenty-first birthday to find a new life in Londonderry, but finds he can't escape his IRA past.