27 January 2015

Ian Banks to write another Rebus

Rebus is back. The maverick Scottish detective returns for a 20th novel (provisional title Even Dogs In The Wild), after author Ian Rankin's year-long sabbatical.

The new book, to be released in autumn 2015, will also see the return of regular characters DI Siobhan Clarke and local gangster Ger Cafferty.
DI Clarke is investigating the death of a senior lawyer during a robbery. But the case becomes more complex when a note is discovered indicating that this may have been no random attack. When Ger Cafferty receives an identical message, Clarke decides that the recently retired John Rebus may be able to help...
Scotland’s favourite detective has already made three comebacks since he closed his first "final" case in Exit Music (2007). The series was written in real time, so Rankin was forced to "retire" the detective when he hit 60.

Since the first Rebus Knots and Crosses appeared in 1987 Rankin has published 28 novels, several short story anthologies, a graphic novel and a play. Sixteen months ago Rankin says he suffered a burnout. He had also lost several close friends.

Gavin Wallace, head of literature at Creative Scotland, died in February 2013. At Wallace’s funeral Rankin saw another good friend, fellow author Iain Banks. Within months Banks revealed he was suffering from terminal cancer and he died in June 2013.

22 January 2015

Author profile: Stuart Carolan



Dublin-based playwright Stuart Carolan is probably best known for creating Love/Hate, the cult crime drama series that began on RTÉ in 2010. He also wrote many episodes for the award-winning series.

In November 2014, RTÉ confirmed that a sixth series was in development, but that the series would not air in 2015.

Carolan (Ó Cearbhalláin in Irish) is originally from Navan and studied history at Trinity College Dublin.

He created the "Navan Man" character on Today FM's satirical show The Last Word. He then turned to theatre and wrote his first play Defender of the Faith which premiered at Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 2004.

The thriller is set on an Armagh farm in 1986 as members of an IRA family fall apart under the immense strain of suspicion and paranoia. The play then toured internationally, reaching Off Broadway and Glasgow.

In 2007 Carolan was a Writer-in-Association at the Abbey.

Offical author page on Facebook

19 January 2015

Author profile: Liz Allen



During the 1990s Liz Allen was one of Ireland's best-known crime correspondents. In 2001 she won a constructive dismissal case against her former employers, the Sunday Independent, and was awarded over £70,000 by the Employment Appeals Tribunal .

She then left journalism and began work on her first novel, the bestselling Last to Know (2004).

Deborah Parker is the newest recruit at Jennings and Associates solicitors, and she’s just bagged herself one of the biggest clients of all time. Michael Mooney Jr. is wanted by police for the brutal rape of a prostitute, but he just happens to be the son of one of the major players in Irish organized crime. Deborah is his key to freedom, but you can’t play with the Devil without getting burned.

The story is set over three decades and spans the downright seedy to the high-flying lives of Irish crime bosses. This debut novel was followed by The Set Up (2005).

During Allen's time as a journalist she testified against several major gangland figures of the 1990s including John Gilligan, giving evidence under armed guard at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin.

Allen was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for her undercover investigative work into the criminal gangs and the State's failures in investigating them. She was found guilty under the Act for publishing a document, available to police nationwide, which contained details of a bank robbery.

She now lives in Wicklow with her family.

16 January 2015

Author profile: Steve Cavanagh

Steve Cavanagh's debut novel The Defence (2015) is the first of his series of legal thrillers are set in New York City featuring Eddie Flynn, former con-artist turned trial lawyer.

"It's been over a year since Eddie vowed never to set foot in a courtroom again. But now he doesn't have a choice. Olek Volchek, the infamous head of the Russian mafia in New York, has strapped a bomb to Eddie's back and kidnapped his ten-year-old daughter, Amy.

"Eddie only has 48 hours to defend Volchek in an impossible murder trial - and win - if he wants to save his daughter."

The second book in the series has the working title of The Plea.

Cavanagh was born and raised in Belfast and is a practising solicitor in the city. He studied law in Dublin and Cardiff.

Official author website: Stevecavanagh.com

Author on Twitter: @SSCav

See also: Declan Burke's review of The Defence

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14 January 2015

Author profile: Hugo Hamilton

Irish writer Hugo Hamilton's detective fiction series featuring Dublin Garda Pat Coyne begins with Headbanger (1997).

In Sad Bastard (1998) Coyne is out of work after being injured in the line of duty. He undergoes psychotherapy (to qualify for disability pay), encountering what he calls "cartoon psychology". When a body washes up at the docks, Coyne's son is prime suspect.

The playful style in both novels is of the hard-boiled black comedy variety. About halfway through Sad Bastard there is also a homage to the lunchtime sequence in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Hamilton has Irish-German parentage and grew up with three languages - Irish, English, and German. His fiction often explores the crossroads of these three cultures, such as in Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall in and the "New Ireland", and in childhood in his acclaimed autobiography The Speckled People.(2003).

On leaving school, after a brief spell in a Dublin newspaper he worked for a publishing company in Germany. He then became a writer of short stories and novels. He currently lives in Dublin.

His other work ranges from his debut novel Surrogate City (1990) to the short story collection Dublin Where the Palm Trees Grow (1996). His most recent novel, Every Single Minute (2014) is a fictional account of a journey to Berlin with fellow writer Nuala O Faolain, who was dying of cancer at the time.

Update, 3 November 2016: No Exit Press is to reissue Headbanger and Sad Bastard in one volume as part of a new series of "two-in-one" classics in March 2017.

12 January 2015

Author profile: Mark O’Sullivan


Mark O'Sullivan introduces his unusual police character DI Leo Woods in Crocodile Tears (2013). Woods is a fiftysomething former UN peacekeeper in the Balkans. He has a cocaine habit, a hobby of collecting masks and a face disfigured by Bell's Palsy.

In his first case in the series he is teamed up with a new sidekick, the bright and ambitious DS Helen Troy, to investigate the murder of a property tycoon in Dublin. The novel is set in November 2010, with the Irish recession in full flow, freezing temperatures and the arrival in Dublin of the IMF.

DI Woods and DS Troy are reunited in the follow-up Sleeping Dogs (2015):
Gangland boss Harry Larkin, dying after a brutal shooting, begs DI Woods to find his missing daughter. Woods is drawn into the dysfunctional Larkin family - including Harry’s wife with whom he had an affair.
O'Sullivan's crime fiction series follows three pre-teen books, four YA novels and Enright (2005), a novel revolving around the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Sergeant Tom Enright in 1921 as the Irish War of Independence draws to a close.

O'Sullivan's numerous awards include the Prix des Loisirs (France) and two White Raven Book (European Libraries) Awards.

He says he has always been a crime fiction fan, and decided to work in the genre "when the great Scandinavian crime wave came", particularly after the BBC4 broadcasts of Wallander and The Killing.

He has written radio drama for RTE and contributed to Lyric FM’s Quiet Corner. He lives with his family in Thurles, County Tipperary, and works as an environmental health officer.

See also: Mark O’Sullivan on "Creating a Detective"

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9 January 2015

Author profile: Brendan Landers

The eponymous Milo Devine in Brendan Landers's first novel in 2001 is a former garda turned private eye.

His latest case is to find the beautiful but wilful daughter of a politician. He does, but she's dead and he's chief suspect.

Landers was born in Dublin and grew up in Raheny. His first job was in the mail room of Irish Shipping. He also worked as a baker and factory worker in London and on returning to Dublin became a bus conductor.

In 1984 he emigrated to Toronto and studied journalism, returning to Ireland in 2000 ("a terrible mistake").

As a journalist and short story writer his work has been published in a wide range of Irish and North American publications.

Milo Devine was republished on Kindle in January 2015. Read sample chapters.

Official author website: Brendanlanders.com

Author on Twitter: @BrendanLanders

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8 January 2015

Author profile: Roger Hudson

Death Comes By Amphora (2007) is the first in Roger Hudson's series of historical mystery novels set in Ancient Athens.

It starts in 461 BC and introduces the 18-year-old Lysanias and his ageing slave Sindron. Lysanias  is summonsed home from  the colonies after his Uncle Klereides dies in suspicious circumstances.

Hudson has dual Irish/British nationality. He grew up in the Surrey countryside as an evacuee from London during the War. After national service in the RAF he studied economics at University College London.

He worked in journalism, technical editing, publicity and writing scripts for corporate videos.

After his children grew up, he and his wife moved from  London to Dublin  (where she is originally from) and a decade later to Drogheda.

Hudson is a member of Poetry Ireland, the Poetry Association (UK), the Crime Writers Association, the Historical Novel Society and Visual Artists Ireland.

Official author website: Rogerhudson.me.uk

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Latest Adrian McKinty: Gun Street Girl

Gun Street Girl is the fourth in the Sean Duffy series by acclaimed crime writer Adrian McKinty. When Duffy grudgingly takes on a double murder case, he finds himself on the trail of a conspiracy which could cost him everything.

Belfast, 1985. Gunrunners on the borders, riots in the cities, The Power of Love on the radio. And somehow, in the middle, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy is hanging on, a Catholic policeman in the hostile Royal Ulster Constabulary.

Duffy is initially left cold by the murder of a wealthy couple, shot dead while watching TV. And when their troubled son commits suicide, leaving a note that appears to take responsibility for the deaths, it seems the case is closed.

But something doesn’t add up, and people keep dying. Soon Duffy is on the trail of a mystery that will pit him against shadowy US intelligence forces, and take him into the white-hot heart of the biggest political scandal of the decade.

Available from Amazon UK from: 8 January 2015

7 January 2015

Author profile: Andrew Nugent


Benedictine monk Andrew Nugent was the author of the "Molly Power" detective series.

In his crime fiction debut The Four Courts Murder (2005) a Dublin High Court judge is found dead - slumped in his chair, his neck snapped by a well-aimed kick. DI Denis Lennon and DS Molly Power are put on the case.

In Second Burial (2007) a Nigerian man is found in the Dublin Mountains with a leg amputated and soon after dies in hospital. The investigation by Inspector Jim Quilligan of the Dublin Murder Squad and DS Power takes them from Little Africa in Parnell Street in Dublin to Nigeria.

Soul Murder (2008) involves a brutal killing in a boarding school. 1968: Murder And Memoir (2014) is a fictionalised memoir:
Childhood friends Eoin and Andrew leave Strasbourg, where they are both studying, to embark upon a summer hitch-hiking through Normandy and Brittany, escaping the political turbulence of the 1968 Student Revolution.  
When Eoin disappears one evening and his dead body is found in a shallow grave, Andrew goes on a hunt to find the killer.
Nugent took legal degrees at University College Dublin and at King’s Inns and qualified as a barrister. After two years in legal practice, he took holy orders, joining Glenstal Abbey  in 1961.

He was ordained in August 1968. Between 1979 and 2001 he spent a total of 10 years in a monastery in Nigeria. He was Glenstal's Prior up to 2008. He died on 24 November 2015.

Seán O'Keeffe, managing director of Liberties Press, said: "Andrew had a spare, elegant writing style, and was a wonderful stoyteller, with a wide-ranging knowledge of European history, and a forsenic eye for detail. He was never afraid to express his opinions. Andrew was a consummate gentleman, and will be sorely missed."



Author profile: Stuart Neville

"The Twelve is a revenge tragedy in the Elizabethan mode, scripted by Quentin Tarantino and produced by the makers of The Bourne Identity ... But it possesses a profound and wider significance... The Twelve is an important part of [Northern Ireland's] purging." - The Irish Times

Stuart Neville is a leading crime fiction writer from Northern Ireland known in particular for his award-winning debut novel The Twelve (2009, known in the US as The Ghosts of Belfast).
Belfast, 2007, two months after the elections in which the North's  voters finally chose a government of their own. Ex-IRA hitman and "Republican hero" Gerry Fegan, his finances covered by a Sinn Féin-paid salary for a nonexistent community job, embarks on a killing spree of his former bosses, the IRA old guard, as a form of absolution.
Neville published three critically acclaimed sequels, Collusion (2010), Stolen Souls (2013) and The Final Silence (2014).

His novel Ratlines (2013), about Nazis harboured by the Irish state following WWII, is currently in development for television.
“You can't choose where you belong, and where you don't. But what if the place you don't belong is the only place you have left?”- Stuart Neville, The Twelve
He also co-edited Belfast Noir (2014) with Adrian McKinty. His new series based on DCI Serena Flanagan kicks off with Those We Left Behind (publication date 26 June 2015):
Serena Flanagan (then an ambitious Detective Sergeant) takes days to earn the trust of 12-year-old Ciaran Devine, who confesses to murdering his foster father. 
Seven years later Flanagan is a DCI and Ciaran is about to re-enter society. But his probation officer Paula suspects there's more to the case. Ciaran's confession saved his brother Thomas from a far lengthier sentence, and Paula can see the unnatural hold Thomas still has over his younger brother. 
When she brings her fears to DCI Flanagan, years of lies begin to unravel.
Before becoming a best-selling author, Neville was a musician, teacher, salesman, film extra, baker "and a hand double for a well known Irish comedian". He has also been known to play guitar (and harmonica) with singer-songwriter Nina Armstrong over the years.



Official author website: Stuartneville.com

Author on Twitter: @stuartneville

Author profile: Pat Mullan

In Pat Mullan's novel Last Days of the Tiger (2011), burnt-out lawyer Ed Burke flees New York, a failed marriage, and a high-pressure career as a criminal lawyer and returns home to Dublin at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom.

Burke's new job is to represent a prominent developer in a tribunal investigating property rezoning, and he is drawn into an affair with a glamorous old flame, now the wife of a corrupt and powerful political leader. Then she is murdered in his bed...

In the follow-up Creatures of Habit (2011) Burke returns to Ireland to investigate the death of a boy at a Catholic boarding school; the boy's father cannot believe the authorities' assertion that his son died accidentally.

Mullan's first novel, The Circle of Sodom (2002), was an American based political thriller, followed by the conspiracy tale Blood Red Square (2005).

He was born in Ireland and has lived in England and North America. He is a graduate of St Columb's College, Northwestern University and the State University of New York. Formerly a banker, he now lives in Connemara, in the west of Ireland.

He is Ireland Chair of International Thriller Writers, Inc. and is a member of Mystery Writers of America.

He has published articles, poetry and short stories in a wide range of magazines, has two collections of poetry online.

Official author website: Patmullan.com

Author on Twitter: @PatMullan

See also: Pat's blog Noir by Noir West

Author profile: Cormac Millar

Cormac Millar is the pen name of Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, who teaches Italian at Trinity College Dublin.

His crime novel An Irish Solution (2005) was the first work of fiction published by Penguin Ireland.

Seamus Joyce has got a few things on his mind. His wife is in hospital, dying of an unidentified ailment. He has just been appointed Acting Director of the Irish Drug Enforcement Agency, and the new Minister for Justice wants to secure a few big scalps in the Dublin drug trade. Soon he begins to suspect that the police, in league with the Minister, are bending the rules.

The Grounds (2006) is a murder mystery set in the mythical King's College Dublin, in the grounds of the Phoenix Park. The college has its own website.

Born in Cork, Ó Cuilleanáin is the son of novelist and children's writer Eilís Dillon, and brother of the poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. After studying the violin in Dublin and Rome, he went on to university studies in Dublin, Cambridge and Florence.

He was chairman of the Dublin Arts Festival in the 1970s and served as chairman of the Irish Translators and Interpreters Association and Irish Writers Centre. With Michael Cronin he co-edited The Languages of Ireland (2003). His latest academic books are co-edited volumes, Translation and Censorship (2011) and Translation Right or Wrong (2013).

Official author website: Cormacmillar.com

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Author profile: Eoin McNamee

Although Eoin McNamee writes about crimes, he isn’t a traditional crime writer per se. He fictionalises real-life events, such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, using the real names of those involved.

His novels include Resurrection Man (1994), which detailed the bloodletting of the Shankill Butchers, a Loyalist gang in 1970s Belfast. Its film version, for which he wrote the script, was released in 1998.

"When I got to the end of Resurrection Man, I changed all the names. But it almost felt like a dishonest thing to do, as everyone knew who it was about, so when I did Blue Tango, I just felt it was the right thing to use the real names, because that was the story you were telling."

His "Blue" trilogy features the historical figure of Sir Lancelot Curran, a ruthless lawyer, politician, and attorney general.

The Blue Tango (2002) was longlisted for the Booker Prize. It follows the aftermath of the savage murder of a judge's daughter in 1952, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in recent Irish history.

Completing the trilogy are Orchid Blue (2010) and Blue is the Night (2015). The latter took the  Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award at the 2015 Listowel Writers' Week. The €15,000 award is the highest monetary prize awarded for a book published by an Irish author.

The Ultras (2005) is set in Northern Ireland inthe 1970s, and takes its cue from the true-life story of Special Forces Operative Captain Robert Nairac before his disappearance in the "covert war".

McNamee has also written a series under the pseudonym John Creed, featuring the character of intelligence officer Jack Valentine.

He also wrote the script for I Want You (1998), a film directed by Michael Winterbottom, and episodes of the Irish police drama series Red Rock, as well as an episode of TG4's Irish-language crime drama An Bronntanas.

Originally from Kilkeel in County Down, he now lives in Sligo. Having studied law at university, he is suitably versed on the legalities behind writing "faction" and how to avoid the potholes other writers may have fallen into.

He is currently working on a novel about the snooker player Alex "Hurricane" Higgins.

Author profile: Joseph Hone

“Espionage action of the Deighton or le Carré variety.” —The New York Times

Irish writer Joseph Hone specialises in spy novels. At the height of his popularity in the 1970s he was favourably compared with  Len Deighton, Eric Ambler and John le Carré.

His most famous novels, a quartet featuring the Peter Marlow character, begin with The Private Sector (1971). It is set in the Six Day War as Marlow, a teacher in Cairo, finds himself becoming a spy for the British.

In The Sixth Directorate (1975), Marlow is released from Durham jail, a frame-up by his own Department. The subsequent novels in the series are The Flowers of the Forest (1980) and The Valley of the Fox (1982).

Lilliput Press published Hone's autobiography Wicked Little Joe in 2009.

"In the summer of 1939, as a two-year-old in London, I was given away by my parents to a Chelsea friend and taken on the Irish Mail to Dublin."

Hone grew up at Maidenhall in County Kilkenny, raised by the historian and essayist Hubert Butler and his wife Peggy. Hone became a boarder at Sandford Park in Dublin and then at St Columba's, and as a teenager was an assistant for John Ford during the making of The Quiet Man.

Hone worked in a London bookshop, taught at a school in Drogheda and  in the Egyptian Ministry of Education, and had a short spell with the UN Secretariat in New York in 1968. He also worked for a publishing firm, and in radio, TV and the theatre. He was radio and television critic for The Listener magazine during the 1970s.

Since 2000 he has taught creative writing at Wroxton College in Oxfordshire.

Author profile: Maggie Gibson

Maggie Gibson's "Grace de Rossa Mystery" crime series from the 1990s begins with Grace, the Hooker, the Hard Man and the Kid (1995).

De Rossa is a thirtysomething police detective, her life is in a mess, her husband has left her for her best friend, and she is suspected of being on the take from a criminal gang. When a runaway girl is found murdered, Grace insists it's a case of child abuse but her superiors disagree.

By book two, The Longest Fraud (1996), de Rossa has resigned from the police force and become a PI. The third novel in the series is Deadly Serious (1997).

Gibson lives and writes in Dublin. She has also had several novels published under the name Anna O'Malley. She has been a scriptwriter for films and for the RTÉs soap opera Fair City.

Author profile: Paul Carson

Irish author Paul Carson is a doctor in real life and has been described as "the master of the medical thriller".

His best-sellers include Scalpel (1997), Cold Steel (1998), Final Duty (2000), Ambush (2003) and Inquest (2013). The latter features the central character of Dr Mike Wilson, Dublin City Coroner.

Carson grew up in the seaside town of Newcastle, County Down, and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin.

After graduation he moved to Australia to work in a hospital cum family practice in the Barossa Valley wine growing region.

In 1984 he returned to Ireland to establish his own practice. He lives in south Dublin with his family.


Official author website: Paulcarson.ie

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Author profile: Aifric Campbell

Aifric Campbell is an Irish writer who spent 13 years at Morgan Stanley, where she became Managing Director on the London trading floor.

Her first novel, The Semantics of Murder (2008), was inspired by an unsolved murder of a brilliant mathematician in LA.

The Loss Adjustor (2010) tells the story of a woman who is haunted by the loss of her childhood friends.

On the Floor (2012) was long-listed for the Orange Prize. The  interview below with Tristan Rosenstock for TG4 was filmed in Dublin in January 2013, mainly around the International Financial Services Centre.


Campbell's screenwriter credits include the film C.K. (2012)  inspired by the real-life case of an Amsterdam accountant who embezzled €16 million and disappeared.

According to her biography on her publishers' (Serpent's Tail) website:
As a convent schoolgirl in Dublin, her greyhound won the Irish Derby and a hymn she co-wrote won a national TV song contest. She moved to Sweden where she worked as an au pair, completed a Linguistics degree and lectured in semantics at the University of Göteborg. 
She spent 13 years as an investment banker in the City of London before leaving to study psychotherapy and creative writing, most recently at the University of East Anglia. She now lives in Sussex with her husband and son.
Official author website: Aifriccampbell.com

Author on Twitter: @AifricCampbell

See also: Thesemanticsofmurder.com

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Author profile: Ingrid Black

Ingrid Black is the pseudonym of husband-and-wife writing team Eilis O'Hanlon and Ian McConnel.

Their "Saxon and Fitzgerald" series revolves around Saxon (her first name is never revealed), a dysfunctional, cigar-smoking former FBI agent who ran away from her former life and now lives in Dublin.

Saxon is in a relationship with Grace Fitzgerald, a Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of the Dublin Metropolitan Police’s Murder Squad (although the DMP disbanded in 1925 this is a modern series).

The first Ingrid Black thriller The Dead (2003) was followed by The Dark Eye (2004), The Judas Heart (2007) and Circle of the Dead (2008).

The authors live in Belfast. O'Hanlon is originally from the city and writes for the Sunday Independent. She is well known for taking a heavily critical line against Sinn Féin.

Author profile: Vincent Banville

Wexford-born writer Vincent Banville's first novel, An End to Flight (1973), was originally published under the pen name Vincent Lawrence. It follows an Irish protagonist through the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran war. Banville himself  taught in Nigeria for five years.

Crime novels under his own name include the "John Blaine" private detective series: Death by Design (1993), Death of the Pale Rider (1995), Cannon Law (2002), Sad Song (2008), and An Accident Waiting to Happen (2009). They are mostly set in Dublin.

He has also published four books in The Hennessy series for children.

He lives in Dublin. His brother is Booker Prize-winner John Banville, aka Benjamin Black.

Author profile: William Ryan

"A crime novel provides an interesting basis for an investigation into the Soviet world, particularly for the tragic period the Korolev novels are set in." - William Ryan
William Ryan is an Irish writer whose "Korolev Mysteries" series revolves around Moscow detective Alexei Korolev in the 1930s during Stalin's reign of terror.

He began visiting Russia in the late 1980s and 1990s, and still visits regularly to map out the locations for his Korolev novels.

The Holy Thief (2011) was followed by The Bloody Meadow (2012), which was shortlisted for the Ireland AM Irish Crime Novel of the Year.

Ryan grew up in Limerick and "stumbled into law" at Trinity College Dublin. He practised briefly as a barrister before studying creative writing in the University of St Andrews. He also worked as an in-house lawyer in the City of London before taking up writing full-time.

He lives with his family in west London.

Official author website: William-ryan.com

William Ryan on Twitter: @WilliamRyan_

Author profile: Darragh McManus

Darragh McManus is an Irish author and journalist whose crime fiction includes Even Flow (2012), a vigilante thriller, and The Polka Dot Girl (2013), a noir-style detective story with an all-female cast.

He has also written YA mysteries, a comic novel under the name Alexander O’Hara, and the sports book GAA Confidential (2007).

He lives in the west of Ireland and is currently working on more YA stories.

Official author website: Darraghmcmanus.com

Author on Twitter: @McManusDarragh

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Author profile: Gerry O'Carroll

Gerry O'Carroll's debut crime novel, The Gathering Of Souls (2010), follows detectives Moss Quinn and Joe Doyle in a race against time to find Quinn's abducted wife.

O'Carroll himself is a retired real-life detective inspector who was central to the investigation of over 80 murders.

He personally arrested serial killers John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans, and was involved in the pursuit of John Gilligan, responsible for the murder of Veronica Guerin.

He was also one of the first detectives to hear Joanne Hayes's controversial murder confession in the Kerry Babies case.

O'Carroll was played by Jon Voight in John Boorman's movie The General (1998).

After his retirement from the police force O'Carroll  became a columnist for the INM group of newspapers. His autobiography The Sheriff: A Detective's Story (2007)  traces his life from a Kerry upbringing as one of 15 children to his career as one of Ireland's most well-known police officers.

6 January 2015

Author profile: Seán Moncrieff

Journalist and broadcaster Seán Moncrieff's first novel, Dublin (2001), is set firmly in the Celtic Tiger boom in the run-up to the millennium. It is possibly the first crime novel to feature the Millennium Spire in O'Connell Street (though in real life the construction of the monument was delayed until January 2003).

Dublin was mucky and vulgar. Like a tourist who gets drunk and wakes up with a huge tattoo. This is what it's like for you: your name is Simon Dilion. You're 35. You're a failure. Too hungover to go to work, too lazy to get a new job, too keen to blame everyone else: your mad father, your estranged wife, your so-called friends. Blame them. Blame Dublin. You'd rather do a few lines of coke, but there's a beautiful French woman you can't remember meeting, cops banging on the door asking about a dead woman you don't know, Russian gangsters asking questions you can't answer. Murders all over the city; bombs in O'Connell Street. And it's got nothing to do with you. Except that it's all your fault.
Moncrieff's other novels include The History of Things  (2007) - an unconventional crime novel set at the end of the economic boom - and The Angel of the Streetlamps (2012), which intertwines five connecting stories during the recession.

His non-fiction titles include Stark Raving Rulers: Twenty Minor Despots Of The Twenty-First Century (2004) and God, A Users' Guide (2006)

Moncrieff was born in London to a mother from County Mayo and a father from Edinburgh. When he was 12  his family moved to Ballinasloe in County Galway. He studied journalism in Dublin and  did a degree in English and Philosophy in University College Dublin (UCD).

The Moncrieff Show on Newstalk has won eight PPI radio awards.

Author Profile: Glenn Meade

Glenn Meade's first novel, Brandenburg (1997), about a neo-Nazi resurgence in present-day Europe, came about while working on an article for the Times newspaper on the billions in Nazi gold that went missing at the end of the war.

He has written ten thrillers and at the last count they have been translated into 26 languages.

He has also worked on several film scripts but describes Hollywood as "not a pleasant experience" and says you should "gratefully accept the pay cheque, walk away and just pray that they don’t turn your treasured story into a musical".

Born in Finglas in Dublin, Meade studied telecommunications then worked in New Hampshire in the field of pilot training. He has also been a journalist. He lives in County Wicklow.

Official author website: Glennmeadeauthor.com

Author on Twitter: @glenn_meade

Author profile: Pauline McLynn

Star of stage and screen (Father Ted, Shameless), Pauline McLynn also has a successful writing career.

Her published books are in double figures and the first three were comedy / mystery novels featuring Dublin private eye Leonora "Leo" Street: Something for the Weekend (2000), Better than a Rest (2001) and Right on Time (2002).

McLynn was born in Sligo and grew up in Galway. She studied  English and History of Art at Trinity College Dublin before embarking on her acting career.

She has acted with many top Irish theatre companies including the Abbey, the Gate, Rough Magic and Druid. She also starred with Dermot Morgan in the satirical radio show Scrap Saturday and has read Books at Bedtime for both RTÉ and BBC.

Her films include Far and Away, When Brendan Met Trudy and Angela’s Ashes.

Official author website: Paulinemclynn.com

Author on Twitter: @paulinemclynn1

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Author profile: Adrian McKinty

"I Hear the Sirens in the Street blew my bloody doors off!"
- Ian Rankin
Adrian McKinty has written more than 16 books, from crime and mystery novels to YA fiction. He also co-edited Belfast Noir (2014) with Stuart Neville.

McKinty's first crime novel, Dead I Well May Be (2003), the first in the Michael Forsythe trilogy, was shortlisted for the 2004 Steel Dagger Award.

The award-winning DI Sean Duffy series began with The Cold Cold Ground (2012) and is now on its fourth novel, Gun Street Girl (2015). It features a Catholic cop in a predominantly Protestant RUC in Northern Ireland during the 1980s.

McKinty grew up in Carrickfergus in County Antrim. He studied law at Warwick University and politics and philosophy at Oxford.

After college he worked in New York City "at various odd jobs with varying degrees of legality" until 2001 when he moved to Denver, Colorado to teach English. In 2008 he emigrated again, this time to Melbourne in Australia with his wife and children.
"McKinty's descriptions of Belfast won't win him any friends in the Northern tourist industry. But Joyceans will be entertained spotting the many nods to Ulysses."  - Eugene McEldowney
Official author website: Adrianmckinty.com

The author on Twitter: @adrianmckinty

See also: the author's blog and a half-hour interview (audio only) from May 2014 about the Duffy series.




Author profile: Matt McGuire

"It was January. It was raining. The kid was dead..."

Dark Dawn (2012) and When Sorrows Come (2014) are the first two books in Matt Maguire's series of police procedurals set in post-ceasefire Belfast, featuring DS John O'Neill.

Originally from Belfast, McGuire is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Western Sydney in Australia.

His current research explores the role of literature in the aftermath of political conflict, with a focus on Northern Ireland in the wake of the Troubles.

He has published widely about Irish and Scottish literature, including Contemporary Scottish Literature (2009), and was editor of The Everyman Book of Irish Poems (2011).

Author on Twitter: @matt__mcguire

Author profile: Claire McGowan

Claire McGowan's "Paula Maguire" series is set in the fictional town of Ballyterrin ("which is not a million miles away from my hometown of Newry") and features the missing persons response unit (MPRU), a specialist team devoted to old and new missing persons cases.

Maguire is a forensic psychologist who was born in a border town in Northern Ireland. When she was 13 her own mother disappeared.

The Lost (2013) and The Dead Ground (2014) have been optioned by BBC Drama Production as the basis for a returning TV series.

The next Paula Maguire, The Silent Dead, is due to be published in November 2015.
"Years ago Ian Rankin said the reason there was so much Scottish crime fiction but no Irish crime fiction was that we were all living in a war zone and no one wanted to read books about it as well. But since the Good Friday agreement people are now ready to deal with it, and the fictionalisation of it helps."
- Claire McGowan
Her debut novel The Fall (2012) is about a woman whose life falls apart when her banker boyfriend is accused of murder.

McGowan grew up in a small village in Northern Ireland. After studying English and French at Oxford University and travelling to China and France, she moved to London where she now lives. She has been running the MA in Crime Thriller Novels at City University London since 2012.

Besides writing crime fiction under her own name she publishes contemporary women's fiction as Eva Woods, and writes scripts, articles, and the occasional bit of stand-up.

Official author website: Ink-stains.co.uk

The author on Twitter: @inkstainsclaire

See also: the author's blog

Author profile: Brian McGilloway

"Devlin is becoming a favourite among serious fans of murder mysteries" - The Irish Times.
Brian McGilloway is the author of the "Inspector Benedict Devlin" and "DS Lucy Black" series.

His first novel Borderlands (2007) was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger. It begins on the Tyrone/Donegal border - technically an international boundary between the North and South of Ireland - in an area known as the "borderlands".

His fifth novel, Little Girl Lost (2011), introduced a new series featuring DS Lucy Black, followed by Hurt (2013, released as  Someone You Know in the US) and the forthcoming Preserve the Dead (July 2015, Sticks and Stones in the US):
DI Black is visiting her father, a patient in a secure unit in Gransha Hospital on the banks of the River Foyle. He has been hurt in an altercation with another patient, and Lucy is shocked to discover him chained to the bed for safety. She barely has time to take it all in, before a body is spotted floating in the river below...
In 2014 McGilloway won BBC Northern Ireland's Tony Doyle Award for his screenplay Little Emperors and became Writer In Residence with BBC Northern Ireland.

He was born in Derry. After studying English at Queen's University Belfast, he taught English at St Columb's College in Derry. McGilloway himself lives near the borderlands.

In this short video from 2010 he talks about the Devlin series.



Official author website: Brianmcgilloway.com

Author on Twitter: @brianmcgilloway

Author profile: Eugene McEldowney

Eugene McEldowney is author of a series of crime novels featuring DS Cecil Megarry (sometimes Mcgarry) of the Northern Ireland Special Branch.

Megarry is tough, irascible, confused, bullying, hard-nosed and compassionate by turns, the kind of cop who clears his throat in the morning with a shot of Bushmills. Most of the action is set around Belfast, though The Sad Case of Harpo Higgins (1996) moves to Dublin around the start of the ceasefire in Northern Ireland, as Megarry recovers from a heart attack and helps to investigate a drugs-related killing.

McEldowney was born in Belfast and educated at Queen's University. He was a journalist with The Irish Times and is now retired and living in north County Dublin.

He began to write fiction in 1994 with the first Megarry novel, A Kind of Homecoming. His non-crime fiction books include Stella's Story (2002) and The Faloorie Man (1999).

Official author website: Amazon author page

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Author profile: Ava McCarthy

"Harry Martinez is strong, attractive and super-smart... a clear-eyed, nonsentimental soul sister of Val McDermid's Kate Brannigan, or Sara Paretsky's VI Warshawski." - the Irish Times

Ava McCarthy's series of international bestselling thrillers features female hacker turned private eye Henrietta "Harry" Martinez.

The series begins with The Insider (2009), about white-collar crime in Dublin's Financial Services Centre. It was Sainsbury’s Book Club's book of the month and has been optioned for film by Polaris Pictures in Hollywood.

McCarthy's next novel, the psychological suspense thriller Dead Secret, is due to be published in November 2015.

McCarthy was born and lives in Dublin. She has a degree in Physics and a Master’s Degree in Nuclear Medicine. A former medical physicist and computer analyst for the London Stock Exchange, she also worked in the software industry for over two decades years before writing her first novel.



She currently works in software in County Dublin, where she lives with her husband and two children.

Author on Twitter: @ava_mccarthy

Author profile: K T McCaffrey

Kevin (K T) McCaffrey writes the "Emma Boylan Murder Mystery" series, featuring an investigative reporter. The series has spanned eight books, starting with Revenge (1999).

McCaffrey studied at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. He worked in several of Dublin's leading advertising agencies and graphic design studios before setting up his own graphics practice in 1984, specialising in corporate and tourist-related design. He then became a freelance specialising in website design and computer graphics.

Originally from Clara, County Offaly, he lives with his family in Dunshaughlin, County Meath.

Official author website: ktmccaffrey.wordpress.com

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Author profile: Niamh O’Connor



Wicklow-based writer Niamh O’Connor was a crime reporter for the Sunday World newspaper for ten years before becoming a full-time author and freelance journalist in 2014.

Her four crime fiction novels, If I Never See You Again (2010), Taken (2011), Too Close For Comfort (2013) and Blink (2014), feature police detective Jo Birmingham.

O'Connor is also the author of Blood Ties, Cracking Crime, and The Black Widow, the best-seller about the life and crimes of Catherine Nevin.

I'm Sorry Sir, her book on Graham Dwyer, who was found guilty in March 2015 of the murder of Elaine O'Hara, was published on Kindle on 4 April 2015 - just days after the trial concluded.
“Niamh’s professional experience as a crime reporter shows on every page.” – Lynda La Plante
Official author website: niamhoconnorwriter.com

Author on Twitter: @Crackingcrime

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Author profile: Gerard O'Donovan

Gerard O'Donovan's Dublin-based police procedurals feature DI and drugs specialist Mike Mulcahy and Siobhan Fallon, chief reporter for a tabloid newspaper.

The first novel in the series, The Priest (2010), was shortlisted for the 2007 Crime Writers’ Association’s Debut Dagger.

O'Donovan was born in Cork and grew up in Dublin. He has worked as a journalist for the Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph, and is a TV critic at the latter.

"Mike Mulcahy evolved through the writing into a cop who returns home after working abroad for a few years, and struggles to fit in again in Dublin. This worked well as I wanted my books to reflect the enormous changes Ireland has undergone in the last few years as a result of the 'Celtic Tiger' boom and the subsequent economic bust." - Gerard O'Donovan, interviewed by Ethan Jones

Official author website: Gerard-odonovan.com

Author on Twitter: @GerardODonovan1

See also: interview with Gerard O'Donovan on TV3's Ireland AM

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Author profile: Louise Phillips

Louise Phillips is the author of four psychological crime thrillers featuring Dr Kate Pearson, a psychologist who works with the Gardai, assisting by providing profiles of suspects.

Her debut novel Red Ribbons (2012) hit the bestseller list in the first week of release. Her second novel, The Doll's House (2013) won the Best Irish Crime Novel of the Year award. This was followed by Last Kiss (2014) and The Game Changer (due out in September 2015).



Author's official website: Louise-phillips.com

Author on Twitter: @LouiseMPhillips

Author profile: Anthony J Quinn

Disappeared (2012) was the opening novel in Anthony Quinn's "Inspector Celcius Daly Mysteries" series, about a Catholic detective in the PSNI. The novel, which is set in counties Tyrone and Armagh, was selected as one of the top ten crime books of 2012 at Kirkus Reviews.

Daly is a middle-aged, semi depressive and insomniac detective who investigates unsolved murders that took place during the Troubles.

The second instalment in the Celcius Daly series was Border Angels (2015):

"A charred corpse and a set of footprints in the snow lead Celcius Daly into the twilight world of people trafficking. Inspector Celcius Daly is hunting for a missing woman, Lena Novak, who mysteriously disappeared one winter's night along the Irish border, leaving in her wake the corpses of two men."
The Blood Dimmed Tide (2014), was an offbeat historical murder mystery set in County Sligo, featuring WB Yeats as a supernatural investigator. Haunted by the restless spirit of an Irish girl whose body is mysteriously washed ashore in a coffin, Yeats travels back from London to Ireland with his apprentice ghost-catcher Charles Adams to piece together the killer's identity.

Quinn grew up on a farm in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland. After studying English at Queen's University Belfast he did a masters in social work, and worked in that field for ten years. His clients included ex-paramilitaries and victims of the conflict.

In 2005 he became a journalist with the Tyrone Times and Mid-Ulster Mail. He also used to work as a market gardener.

He lives near Dungannon in the foothills of the Sperrins.

Official author website: anthonyjquinnwriter.com

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Author profile: Abigail Rieley

Abigail Rieley describes herself as "a writer and recovering journalist based in Dublin, Ireland".

Her first true crime book, The Devil in the Red Dress (2008) was about the trial of Sharon Collins and Essam Eid. It was followed by Death on The Hill (2010), about the killing of Celine Cawley by her husband Eamonn Lillis.

Both books were based on trials she had covered as a courts reporter.

She grew up in London and  has been living in Ireland for almost three decades.

Official author website: Abigailrieley.com

Author on Twitter: @abigailrieley

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Author profile: Liz Nugent

Dublin writer Liz Nugent's award-winning novel Unravelling Oliver (2014) has been described not so much as a whodunnit but a whydunnit.

It opens with Oliver Ryan coldly explaining how he has just beaten his wife into a coma.

On leaving school Nugent worked in London as a clerk in a social welfare office, a medical records office, an estate agency and a construction company. After an accident she returned home to Dublin and spent a year in and out of hospital until diagnosed with Dystonia.

She then worked as a stage manager, and joined Riverdance as a production manager in 1997. She later worked on the scripts of the long-running Irish TV soap opera Fair City, during which she began to write short stories, one of which evolved into Unravelling Oliver.



Official author website: Liznugent.ie

Author on Twitter: @lizzienugent

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5 January 2015

Author pofile: Tony Bailie

Novelist, poet and journalist Tony Bailie is from Downpatrick, Co Down. His third novel A Verse to Murder (2012) is available as an ebook.

When police find Northern Ireland's leading poet with a noose around his neck and his trousers around his ankles they assume it is a case of death by sexual misadventure. 
When Sunday tabloid hack Barry Crowe looks into the dead poet's background he uncovers blackmail, an erotic trio of muses and experimentation with psychedelic drugs… he also gets off with a foxy policewoman with a handcuff fetish.

Bailie's previous two novels, ecopunks (2010) and The Lost Chord (2006) were both published by Lagan Press. He plays guitar in the rock band Samson Stone.

Official author website: TonyBailie.com

See also: A Wee Review - The Lost Chord by Tony Bailie

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Author profile: John McAllister

John McAllister from Ballymena has worked as a kennel boy, a bookie's clerk and an accountant. He studied creative writing at Trinity College Dublin, and has been the writer in residence for various council areas.

The Station Sergeant (2013), the first book in his "Barlow" series, is set in a small Northern Irish community in late 1959 and early 1960.

A local farmer is found dead, a local criminal family is stealing cattle to order, a traumatised German soldier has escape into the countryside, there's a new DI at the station, and Sergeant John Barlow's comfortable life is about to be turned upside down.
"I wrote five stories about Barlow as part of my submission for an M Phil  in Creative Writing, included them in my short story collection, The Fly Pool, and then forgot about Barlow. Except that… 
"People kept contacting me about The Fly Pool, and always they wanted to talk about the Barlow stories and the memories they invoked of their own childhood. On top of that, one of my best friends – an ex-IRA internee who makes the shape of the cross with his fingers if I even mention the Royal Ulster Constabulary – kept nagging at me for another Barlow story. 
"Way back I had started a sixth Barlow story but never finished it. To please my friend I picked it up again and what was supposed to be a short story got completely out of hand." 
- John McAllister talking to Elizabeth A. White

The second book Barlow by the Book is due out in July 2015.
A brawl among youths escalates into a series of violent robberies; a pickpocket targets leading businessmen; a local hood is on the run and suspected of several murders; and the town drunk, Sergeant Barlow’s friend and wartime commander, Major Edward Adair, must be sobered up in time for his sister’s visit. 
Barlow’s problems mount when his wife is released from a mental institution, his daughter Vera is shot during a robbery, his house is bombed and he is suspended from duty on suspicion of perverting the course of justice.
McAllister's previous publications include The Fly Pool and Other Stories (2003) and the novel Line of Flight (2006). He also contributed to the anthology Requiems for the Departed.

Author's Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/john.mcallister.9465

Rob Kitchin's crime fiction

"As far as Irish crime fiction goes, Kitchin delivers all the major ingredients: mystery, psychos and a dash of drag queen farmers." - Gerard Brennan 
Rob Kitchin is a professor at NUI Maynooth, an avid crime fiction reviewer, and the author of four crime novels, the latest of which is the screwball noir Stumped (2014).

His short stories have been published in various outlets including A Twist of Noir, All Due Respect, Close to the Bone, Flash Fiction Offensive, Laughter Shack, Powder Burn Flash, Shotgun Honey and Spinetingler.

Every Saturday he publishes a drabble (a story of exactly 100 words) on his crime fiction blog The View from the Blue House

He is also author or editor of more than two dozen academic books and a 12-volume encyclopedia.

Official author website: The View from the Blue House

Author on Twitter: @RobKitchin

Author profile: Gene Kerrigan

Journalist Gene Kerrigan has written four acclaimed novels set in Dublin's criminal underworld. The most recent, The Rage (2011), won the CWA Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year.

The judging panel described it as:

"A complex noir thriller that's multi-layered and solidly written, with great style and pace .The depiction of post-crash Dublin has a real sense of menace and threat throughout."

His other crime novels are Little Criminals (2005), The Midnight Choir (2007) and Dark Times in the City (2009).

Kerrigan grew up in Cabra in Dublin and one of his early jobs was as a cinema projectionist. He has been writing political commentary about Ireland since the 1970s.

His non-fiction books include the autobiographical Another Country: Growing up in ’50s Ireland (1998), and Goodbe to All That: A Souvenir of the Haughey Era (1992). He is a columnist at the Sunday Independent newspaper.

Official author website: n/a

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Author profile: Joe Joyce

Joe Joyce has worked as a journalist for the Irish Times, the Guardian and Reuters news agency. He has written four thrillers.

His debut novel Off The Record (1990) is set in 1970s Ireland. A gunman kills a dog on a quay; the drowned corpse of a prominent young politician is fished out of the harbour; Seamus Ryle, a bored young reporter whose marriage and career are a shambles, believes there's a connection.

The Trigger Man (1991) is set during the Troubles in the late 1980s. A former IRA sniper returns from exile in Boston to Ireland after a former friend who once saved his life goes missing. He quickly finds himself pursued by former friends and foes.

Echoland (2013) and Echobeat (2014) are a thriller series set during the Second World War (or "the Emergency") in Dublin.

Joyce has also written three non-fiction books - a history/biography of the Guinness family; an acclaimed account of Charles Haughey in government, The Boss; and Blind Justice, about a notorious miscarriage of justice in Ireland in the 1970s.

He also wrote a play about James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty, The Tower.

Official author website: Joejoyce.ie

Author on Twitter: @joejoyce100

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Author profile: Declan Hughes

Declan Hughes is a novelist, playwright, theatre director and screenwriter.

His series of crime novels features Irish-American detective Ed Loy. The name "Loy"  (a loy is a traditional Irish spade) is a homage to the Sam Spade character from The Maltese Falcon.

His award-winning first novel, The Wrong Kind of Blood (2006), has a first chapter that begins:
"The night of my mother's funeral, Linda Dawson cried on my shoulder, put her tongue in my mouth and asked me to find her husband. Now she was lying dead on her living-room floor, and the howl of a police siren echoed through the surrounding hills..."
Subsequent novels include The Colour of Blood (2007), The Dying Breed (2008, US title The Price of Blood), All the Dead Voices (2009) and City of Lost Girls (2010). His latest novel is All the Things You Are (2014).

Hughes is a well-known figure in Ireland's theatre scene. He co-founded Dublin's Rough Magic Theatre Company and has been Writer-in-Association with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

He is Writer Fellow at the Oscar Wilde Centre for Irish Writing at Trinity College, Dublin. He grew up in Dalkey and lives in Sandycove.

Official author website: Declanhughesbooks.com

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