The paths of a secret paramour, a jilted lover, and a reluctant hangman cross in one fateful winter week in Galway, 1885. James Berry was the notorious hangman who ended the lives of over 130 criminals in Victorian Britain and Ireland. Tortured by nightmares as he tried to come to terms with the toll his gruesome work took on him, he played a central role in some of the crimes of the century, including the hanging of William Bury, the man suspected of being Jack the Ripper. This story centers on two notorious murders in Galway, keeping readers transfixed as they journey with this Berry through nineteenth-century Ireland in all its gruesome glory.