The Return of Inspector McDowell is a brooding island-set mystery following Inspector Liam McDowell, who returns reluctantly to Tory Island after the death of his uncle. Haunted by childhood trauma and a bombing that claimed his parents, McDowell plans only to settle his uncle’s affairs and leave. But when the body of a young boy, Seán Donnelly, washes up on the island's rocky shore—strangled and bruised—McDowell is drawn into a murder investigation that reveals the rot beneath the island’s quiet surface.