Joe Joyce's historical fiction Echoland portrays a nervous and divided Dublin. Some see Britain as an ally, others look to Germany for a hopeful future while some wish to remain as neutral as possible.

In this atmosphere of edgy uncertainty, a young lieutenant, Paul Duggan, is drafted into the army's intelligence division, G2, and put on the German desk. Assigned to investigate a German spy who appears to do nothing noteworthy other than write ambiguous letters, Duggan soon gets sidetracked. With a twist that brings Irish politics to the forefront, Duggan attempts to help his uncle, a Fianna Fáil backbench TD, in the search for his missing daughter who has possibly been kidnapped.

The young lieutenant delves into the double-dealing worlds of spies and politics, where ruthlessness, deviousness and occasional violence prevail, before confronting a surprising secret that challenges everything he has grown up believing.