The police in Fox River, Illinois, disinter a local mobster, only to find an empty coffin, leaving Father Dowling to figure out how the missing corpse is related to a mysterious Italian manuscript.
In the 17th Father Dowling mystery, the plot deals with adoption and murder. At its center is a woman born out of wedlock. The mother gave her up for adoption and she may have been adopted by the father.
Father Dowling comes to the aid of a former classmate who had left the priesthood twenty-five years earlier, when he is sued by a woman alleging that he had sexually exploited her as a child, a case that is complicated by the son she claims is his.