St. John's, Newfoundland, 1947. Late on a Monday night in August, a constable finds the battered body of an impoverished old man lying on the concrete steps of a laneway. It appears he was the victim of an accidental collision with two youths running from an act of vandalism. But Inspector Eric Stride of the Newfoundland Constabulary is not convinced. And who is Samuel Rossiter? To find the answers, Stride follows a trail of evidence and circumstance that goes back more than three decades. And at the end of that trail, Stride finds himself caught up in a complex story of privilege and tragedy.