Danny O'Flaherty has returned to his home in New York City after living in Ireland, and after solving a couple of murders there. He's gone back to teaching in an inner-city high school. His fiancée, Fidelma Muldoon, has also moved to New York, and Danny gives in to Fidelma's wish to attend her first St. Patrick's Day parade.
As luck would have it, the day proves far more intolerable than Danny expected from just the crowds of drunken revelers when the highly controversial grand marshal, Fintan Conway, dies on the street only yards from Danny and Fidelma! Once the police have determined that the man was murdered, Fidelma insists that Danny get involved since the man blamed for the killing is none other than their friend from Ireland, Brendan Grady.
As Danny begins the search for the real murderer, he is followed and chased around the city by people in a Mercedes, the detective on the case ridicules Danny's efforts, and Brendan won't tell him anything. Fintan Conway's background story leads him deep into the history of the parade, the Irish in New York City, and the grand marshal's own peculiar newspaper columns. Ultimately, Danny's investigation leads him back to his own neighborhood, and a woman he once loved, and he has to question where his true loyalties lie: with his new friend or his older past.
