31 December 2015

International crime fiction picks, 2015


Here are some of our favourite international books, TV shows and movies of the year - and it doesn't even include any of our Nordic noir favourites...

30 December 2015

Best Irish crime fiction of 2015


2015 was a bumper year for Irish crime fiction. Among major releases were novels by - to name just ten - Alex Barclay, Louise Phillips, John Connolly, Ava McCarthy, Adrian McKinty, Benjamin Black, Sinéad Crowley, Mark O'Sullivan, Karen Perry and Anthony J Quinn.

There were also some dazzling debuts in the crime fiction department, such as novels by Steve Cavanagh, Jax Miller, Alan Walsh, Michael O'Higgins, Frankie Gaffney, Jo Spain and Kelly Creighton.

And it was a good year too for crime fiction on the small and big screen.

Here are some of our personal choices from the past year's Irish crime fiction novels, movies, TV shows and audio books...

29 December 2015

Conor McPherson to write crime series for BBC

BBC Northern Ireland has commissioned leading Irish playwright Conor McPherson to write a short crime series.

Provisionally titled Paula, it begins with a brief encounter that ends in violence, as a man and a woman get locked into a battle driven by vengeance.

While the BBC has billed this as McPherson's first original television series, it isn't his first screenplay for the station. In 2013, he wrote the last episode of the adaptation of Benjamin Black's Quirke.

23 December 2015

Michael Fassbender to play Harry Hole

Irish actor Michael Fassbender will play Harry Hole in a new film adaptation of Jo Nesbø's global bestseller The Snowman, with Martin Scorsese among the production credits.

22 December 2015

Bernice Barrington's debut 'Sisters and Lies'


Writer and journalist Bernice Barrington's debut novel Sisters And Lies will be published by Penguin Ireland on 24 March 2016.

21 December 2015

Sixth 'Sean Duffy' book in the pipeline

Rain Dogs, the fifth book in Adrian McKinty's best-selling Sean Duffy series, is due in the shops on 21 January 2016. Serpent's Tail have already signed him up for a sixth book about the Catholic RUC officer, to be published in a year's time.

It currently has the working title Police at the Station and They Don't Look Friendly (from a Tom Waits song), and brings events in the Northern Ireland Troubles up to 1988...

18 December 2015

DS Kate Maguire is back

The eBook version has just been released of Buried, the sixth novel in Graham Masterton's "Kate Maguire" police series set in County Cork, with hardback and paperback versions available from 11 February 2016.
Beside the old Blarney woollen mill in County Cork, a worker's cottage guards its secrets. In 1921, a mother, father and their two young children disappeared from this house. 
Ninety years later, their mummified bodies are discovered under the floorboards. The gunshot wounds in each skull look like the mark of the IRA. But as Detective Superintendent Katie Maguire reopens the cold case, the flames of old rivalries flare up once more. 

14 December 2015

Author profile: Ed O'Loughlin


Irish author Ed O’Loughlin drew on his experiences as a foreign correspondent for his debut novel, Not Untrue and Not Unkind (2009).

5 December 2015

Here comes Trainspotting 2 again




Two decades on from the film version of Irvine Welsh's debut novel Trainspotting, TriStar Pictures is working on the sequel.

2 December 2015

Bruen and Starr are back



Ten years after first teaming up, Ken Bruen and Jason Starr are back next spring with their fourth novel, PIMP.

1 December 2015

An unusual French take on the Troubles


French writer Sorj Chalandon's novel Return to Killybegs (2013) is an unusual take on the troubles in Northern Ireland.