When the corpse of a teenager turns up in an area known as the borderlands between the North and South of Ireland, Inspector Benedict Devlin heads up an investigation whose only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl's finger and an old photograph, but things are complicated by the killing of another teenager, and Devlin unearths a link between the killings.

Winter 2002. The corpse of local teenager Angela Cashell is found on the Tyrone-Donegal border, between the North and South of Ireland, in an area known as the Borderlands. Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin heads the investigation. The only clues are a gold ring placed on the girl's finger and an old photograph, left where she died.

While Devlin searches for the girl's killer, her father has his own ideas about who is responsible and his own ideas about how to make the killer pay. Meanwhile, Devlin becomes reacquainted with an old flame eager to rekindle their affair.

Then another teenager is murdered, and Devlin unearths a link between the recent killings and the disappearance of a prostitute twenty-five years earlier - a case in which he fears one of his own colleagues is implicated. As a thickening snowstorm blurs the border between North and South, Devlin finds the distinction between right and wrong, vengeance and justice, and even police officer and criminal becoming equally unclear.

A dazzling and highly lyrical debut crime novel, Borderlands marks the beginning of a compelling new series featuring Inspector Benedict Devlin.