Lark Dodge flies to Ireland to keep an eye on her convalescent father and reflect on her own marital storms, but her time-out ends before it can begin when she finds a dead man on the castle-like estate where she and her father are staying. The body is that of an unpopular American businessman with a passion for war games played out in a nearby woods. Tensions explode when another murder takes Lark into secrets of the human heart–and the gruesome atrocities the heart is capable of. Her husband’s unexpected arrival–flying to the rescue–drives Lark and Jay further apart. Then Jay vanishes, and so does the chief suspect in the two murders.