King's College, Dublin, an ancient and thoroughly mediocre institution, is in crisis. It is also Sèamus Joyce's alma mater. When Sèamus is hired to provide a consultant's report on the university for an American consortium, he doesn't have any idea what he's in for. As various disgruntled and long-winded academics try to influence his report, Sèamus realizes that the rot at King's runs deep - and that various forces are keen to clip his wings. Why did somebody steal his mobile phone from his room, while ignoring a large amount of cash? Why does an old flame from student days, now on the staff at King's, crawl into his bed - and almost as quickly crawl out? And why do so many people seem to have such a deep interest in the goings on at King's? Sèamus thinks it might have something to do with the presence on the university board of one of Ireland's leading property developers - and the presence on the university's hallowed (and valuable) grounds of that developer's bulldozers. When, on Seamus's second night at King's, the university's president is murdered, and Sèamus himself is subsequently assaulted by a man who may or may not be the murderer, he knows for certain that the stakes are higher than he could have guessed - and that finding out the truth about King's may be no easier than protecting his own life. The Grounds is the follow-up to Cormac Millar's acclaimed first novel, An Irish Solution.