He has just been entrusted with an important mission to Poland by his college, when Sean O'Neill, his Irish cousin who is a near doppelganger, turns up and begs him to come to Ulster to help in the quest to remove a curse which has been laid on the family at the wedding of Sean's sister Deirdre. Much against his own inclination, Alexander agrees and he and Sean journey to Ireland. There Alexander is plunged into a political situation which is ready to explode, the loves and hates of the dysfunctional O'Neill clan, and a journey to track down the origin of the curse and to solve a murder. This quest will not only endanger Alexander's life and liberty, but force him to ask many questions about his background and inheritance, and what these mean for him and his beliefs.