30 October 2015

BOTM: 'Ghost Flight' by Mel Healy



Our October "Book of the Month": Ghost Flight.

The author: Mel Healy.

The genre: murder mystery, private eye.

28 October 2015

Ruth Rendell's final novel is published


English crime fiction legends PD James and Ruth Rendell died within months of each other earlier this year, but Rendell managed to complete Dark Corners shortly before becoming incapacitated.

27 October 2015

'Cuffs' at the ready on BBC 1


Set around Brighton and Worthing, BBC One’s new cop series Cuffs is the station's first drama commissioned for the pre-watershed 8pm slot in more than eight years.

The first hour-long episode is this Wednesday (28th October) at 8 pm.

Created by Julie Gearey (Prisoners’ Wives, Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, Corrie), its cast includes Amanda Abbington (Sherlock, Case Histories), Shaun Dooley (Broadchurch) and former So Solid Crew rapper Ashley Walters (Top Boy).

26 October 2015

Old Irish legend turned into crime thriller


Dublin-born writer Alan Walsh's debut novel Sour is launched next week. It's a re-telling of Deirdre of the Sorrows (Deirdre an Bhróin) - transplanting the tragic ancient legend to a modern Irish town as a crime thriller.

23 October 2015

'Red Rock' big winner at IFTA awards


Red Rock was the biggest winner at the annual IFTA (Irish Film and Television Academy) awards in Dublin last night.

22 October 2015

Crime seminars at Dublin Book Festival



Among the crime fiction events in this year's Dublin Book Festival, the Irish Writers Centre is hosting back-to-back seminars by Liz Nugent and Ian Sansom.

21 October 2015

Lana Citron's stand-up PI


Not many crime authors have parallel careers in stand-up comedy and acting. Irish writer Lana Citron performs regularly at literary salons and festivals across England, including Glastonbury and the Edinburgh Festival.

She has drawn on her stand-up experiences for two comic detective novels from 2007, The Honey Trap and The Brodsky Touch.

20 October 2015

More on Neil Jordan's detective novel


Bloomsbury has released further details about Neil Jordan's novel The Drowned Detective, due out next February.

19 October 2015

James Nesbitt to play killer dentist


Update, 20 April 2016: since this post, ITV has announced that The Secret will be shown starting on 29 April 2016 at 9 p.m.

Filming begins in Northern Ireland next month of The Secret, a TV drama based on Deric Henderson's best-selling true-crime book Let This Be Our Secret.

James Nesbitt stars as Colin Howell, a respectable Coleraine dentist who becomes a killer in partnership with his lover, Hazel Buchanan (played by Genevieve O'Reilly).

15 October 2015

The Fairview detective

Dublin-born crime fiction writer Bríd Wade's main hero is Matt Costello, a clean-cut, ex-Garda detective turned PI. He is based in Fairview, with offices overlooking the park and an apartment in Clontarf.

Watchers (2013), the first book in the series, revolves around a hunt for a serial killer between Kilkenny and Dublin.

In Sleeping Dogs (2014), a judge is murdered in his home and the murder weapon belongs to a man missing for three years.

In Wild Justice (2014) Costello finds himself thrown into the hunt for a young girl's father and his murderer.

14 October 2015

Murder mystery by Mary O'Sullivan


Best-selling Cork author Mary O'Sullivan turns to crime fiction with her latest novel Thicker Than Water, which is published this morning.

13 October 2015

The garda who writes crime thrillers

John Galvin has drawn on his real-life experiences as a garda officer for his crime fiction.

He hails from Cromane, County Kerry, and is the third generation of his family in the force: his grandfather was an RIC Inspector and his father was a Garda Inspector.

One of his short stories, set around the lives of two rural gardai, won the Sunday Tribune/Hennessy Short Story Award in 1993.

12 October 2015

Blast from the past: Leonard Holton


Highly prolific Irish author Leonard Wibberley (1915–1983) sometimes wrote under the names Patrick O'Connor and Christopher Webb. As Leonard Holton he also penned the action-packed Father Joseph Bredder mystery thrillers.

8 October 2015

Sam Riley, ace of spies


Sam Riley and Kate Bosworth are to star in the BBC's new espionage thriller based on SS-GB (1978), Len Deighton's alternative history novel.
1941: the Germans have won the Battle of Britain and London is under occupation. English police detective Douglas Archer (Riley) finds himself working under the SS as he investigates what appears to be a routine black market murder. Bosworth plays an American journalist who becomes inextricably linked with the murder case.
The five-part series has an impressive writing team - Neal Purvis and Robert Wade have penned the last five James Bond films. The series goes into production this month and will air on BBC One in 2016.

7 October 2015

Crime novel debut by Michael O'Higgins


Leading criminal lawyer and former journalist Michael O'Higgins has published his first novel. Snapshots is a taut crime thriller set in Dublin in 1981.

6 October 2015

Lewis is back and Endeavour on the way



Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox return for the ninth and final series of Lewis tonight, with Angela Griffin as young DS Lizzie Maddox.

But in this first two-parter their old boss Jean Innocent (Rebecca Front) has been replaced by a new Chief Super, Joe Moody (Steve Toussaint).

Henning Mankell (3 Feb 1948 – 5 Oct 2015)



"In life and in art Henning Mankell was a man of passionate commitment. I will miss his provocative intelligence and his great personal generosity. Aside from his stringent political activism, and his decades of work in Africa, he also leaves an immense contribution to Scandinavian literature."

- Kenneth Branagh, the third actor to play Wallander, pays tribute in a statement issued to the media yesterday after the death of the Swedish author.

5 October 2015

Author profile: Des Ekin


Historian and journalist Des Ekin has published two murder mysteries featuring investigative reporters. The first is Stone Heart (1999).

1 October 2015

Nicola Walker stars in 'Unforgotten'



Nicola Walker adds two more police characters to her CV this month. She stars in both the new BBC crime series River and ITV's six-part police procedural Unforgotten alongside Sanjeev Bhaskar. In the latter they play a pair of detectives dealing with a cold case from four decades ago.