It's downbeat Dublin in the late 1980s. Temple Bar, bedsits, and dole queues. Fred, a loser adrift in the world, and Maggie, a fiercely intelligent and complicated writer, are brought together through circumstances they think they can handle, whereas they are totally out of their depth.

In this first part of a planned trilogy, the key ingredients are that the "Butterfly Effect" of two seemingly fringe characters in their society turn out to trigger changes far beyond their plans or wishes.

Basically, they stumble into love and relevance.The tone is laid-back humour. Lots of cultural references to Dublin and Irish society back before the Celtic Tiger showed up. This is a world of secret lives and troubled identities. The "crime plot" element is very much in the background. Fred and Maggie are accidental sleuths. That will be the key element of how their crime stories unfold.

Fred, Maggie, and most of the people they encounter (not including the people who want to kill them) are enjoyable characters. Hanrahan: The Butterly Effect is presented as an audiobook narrated by the writer, who even throws in a bit of his own guitar playing as an audiobook bonus. How could you have bedsits and losers without a bit of dodgy acoustic guitar?