With rivalries rekindled and the brothers Knight digging into the university's past, Sham Rock, the latest in Ralph McInerny's well-loved mystery series, is as witty and charming as ever. The University of Notre Dame relies on Roger Knight, the rotund professor of Catholic Studies, and his brother Philip, a semiretired PI, to investigate certain delicate situations that could put the school in a bad light. Students, faculty, and alumni, like David Williams, are all fair game. Having been a successful financial adviser until recently, David has returned to campus to renege on a pledged donation to the university's ethics program. While he's there, one of his former classmates sends a letter confessing to the murder and a secret burial of one of their closest friends, a student who had gone missing decades before and was never found. As students, David, Patrick, and Timothy made up the "Trinity," an irreverent nickname for three close friends and fierce rivals---be it for on-campus prestige or the affections of a beautiful St. Mary's student from across the road. Ready to help the school put the whole sordid tragedy behind them, Roger and Philip set about the sad task of unearthing Timothy's body, only to find that they have a much bigger mystery with which to contend.

Kinsale, Ireland, in a future time is emerging from the rigors of climate change when a beautiful girl is found stabbed and washed up in Scilly near Bob Foley’s family home, Sham Rock. Bob is a retired US Navy commander whose old friend, Declan McGuinness of the Gardai, is assigned to investigate the murder. Inspector McGuinness’s search takes him to the yacht of a billionaire, Conrad Mercer, who found a way to take advantage of climate change. He employs “Meatface” Henson as his security officer and fixer, a man with a drugs record and, as it turns out, a strange interest in the ancestry of Bob Foley. McGuinness is assisted by Garda Brenda Flaherty, who holds Mercer and Henson responsible for the death of her Army Ranger husband years earlier. She agrees to go undercover to gather evidence, barely escaping a dangerous encounter. The adventure takes Declan and Brenda to the Libyan desert, following the kidnapping and strange rescue of Bob Foley’s son, and eventually to France where the international chase continues. Finally, a double engagement in Kinsale and a strange twist on the ancestry of Declan’s old friend ends the story.

Shamrock Tea is an Irish drug that enables its users to see things not given to ordinary mortals. They can sense colours and sounds more vividly; they can penetrate the surface of paintings; they can cross time. The narrator, his cousin and a strange Belgian friend know that their lives are ruled mysteriously by the great van Eyck painting, The Arnolfini Portrait, and they have travelled in dream like moments through the painting into other times. They discover that each moment is connected to every other. But in the strange world of Shamrock Tea, no story can be straightforward. With a cast of characters that includes the gardener Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book will blow your mind.

When the pot of green shamrocks that Rabbit has been growing for St. Patrick's Day goes missing, he asks all the other animals if they have seen it.