Emmi Maeda comes into possession of an antique and plunges through time—into feudal Japan and the world of samurai. Los Angles, present day Emiko &‘Emmi' Maeda set aside her studies following the sudden death of her father. Estranged from her mother and brother and burdened with guilt over her role in the tragic accident, she moves in with her godfather Jake and comes into possession of an antique mirror. While accompanying Jake to Japan on a film shoot, Emmi is caught in a freak storm and plunged through time—into the land of her ancestors. Kyoto, 1864 The city of Kyoto is ablaze with violence and on the brink of civil war. Nakagawa Kaemon is a young samurai with a secret. He gathers information on those who claim to revere the emperor but harbor their own agenda to control the country. Kae is honor-bound to execute anyone who poses a threat to the throne—even if it is Emmi, the unusual young woman he has come to love.

Richard Coulter is a man who has everything. His beautiful new wife is pregnant, his upstart airline is undercutting the competition and moving from strength to strength, his diversification into the casino business in Macau has been successful, and his fabulous Art Deco house on an Irish cliff top has just been featured in Architectural Digest. But then, for some reason, his ex-wife Rachel doesn’t keep her side of the custody agreement and vanishes off the face of the earth with Richard’s two daughters. Richard hires Killian, a formidable ex-enforcer for the IRA, to track her down before Rachel, a recovering drug addict, harms herself or the girls. As Killian follows Rachel’s trail, he begins to see that there is a lot more to this case than first meets the eye and that a thirty-year-old secret is going to put all of them in terrible danger. McKinty is at his continent-hopping, well-paced, evocative best in this thriller, moving between his native Ireland and distant cities within a skin-of-his-teeth timeframe.