So you are the men they have sent to kill me . . .

Philadelphia, 1874, and James McParland, a Pinkerton detective, is being called up by the boss to go on a secret operation. A farmer's son, not long off the boat from Ireland, McParland is instructed to go undercover in the mining communities of Pennsylvania. His mission is to infiltrate the Irish labour unions and the secret society of The Molly Maguires and report his findings back to the mining companies who want to break the unions.

McParland spends two and a half years deep undercover under the alias of James McKenna, doing his best to weather whatever comes at him - the elements, the back-breaking work down the mines, the suspicions of people on all sides. But the deeper in he gets, the higher the stakes become, until the question is not so much will he get the story but whether he'll survive to tell it.

A dazzling story of espionage and intrigue, McParland is also a novel about reinventing yourself, trying to make a mark on the world, and a depiction of a ruthless age of American capitalism.