The Dead Hour is Denise Mena’s follow-up to 2005’s Field of Blood featuring struggling Scottish Daily News reporter Patricia “Paddy” Meehan who, three years after cracking the case of a little boy’s murder to become a full-fledged reporter, is now stuck covering the night shift crime beat. The word is depressing and going nowhere: drunken brawls, knife fights, and domestic violence. So when Paddy investigates a domestic violence dispute in the affluent suburbs, she is ready to dismiss it just as the cops interviewing the distressed couple seem to.

However, when Paddy catches a glimpse of an elegant, blonde woman suffering from a head wound, she is prompted to ask a few questions, only to have her handsome companion shove a fifty pound note at her not to report the story, and Paddy is poor enough where fifty pounds makes a difference. She agrees to not report it, only to sorely regret her decision the next morning reveals the woman to have been Vhari Burnett, a decidedly unmarried human rights lawyer, now found viciously murdered in her own home. It is here that Paddy realizes she had been bribed by Vhari’s murderer.

Things only become increasingly complicated as Vhari’s friend commits suicide, leaving an apologetic note that leads the police to believe that he had killed his friend, and then himself out of guilt. Now Paddy is faced with the decision to either track down Vhari’s real killer and admit to her own part in the crime - and possibly end her career - or to keep quiet about the affair and let her own guilt consume her.