28 January 2016

Roger Allam in new NI political thriller



Queen’s Film Theatre in Belfast is to host a special preview of The Truth Commissioner, starring Roger Allam (The Thick of It, Endeavour, Ashes To Ashes). The screening next Monday, 1 February 2016, at 6.30 pm will be followed by a Q&A with the film’s director Declan Recks.

27 January 2016

Author profile: Jo Bannister

Originally from Rochdale in Lancashire, author Jo Bannister lives in Northern Ireland and had a career in journalism before coming a full-time and prolific author.

25 January 2016

Excerpt: Adrian McKinty reads 'Rain Dogs'



Adrian McKinty reading the opening from the fifth and best book in his "Sean Duffy" series about a Catholic RUC officer in Northern Ireland in the 1980s.

23 January 2016

'Traders': the trailer



New Irish thriller Traders will hit cinemas here on 11 March 2016. Written and directed by Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy, it has several familiar faces from Love/Hate, including Killian Scott, Barry Keoghan, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Donal O'Farrell and Peter O'Meara.

21 January 2016

Blast from the past: Freeman Wills Crofts


Largely unknown among today's readers, Dublin-born author Freeman Wills Crofts (1879–1957) was one of the "big five" in the Golden Age of detective fiction.

20 January 2016

4th 'Breen & Tozer' is in the pipeline


A Book of Scars, book three in William Shaw's "Breen & Tozer" series (out in North America this week as A Song for the Brokenhearted) was previously billed as the conclusion of Shaw's trilogy featuring London Irish detective Cathal Breen.

But William says there will be a fourth book in the series, set in summer 1969 "when the Rolling Stones were playing live in Hyde Park".

18 January 2016

A hit this summer: 'The Last Days of Summer'?


American writer Vanessa Ronan's forthcoming debut novel The Last Days of Summer has already been widely tipped to be one of this year's big summer reads in Ireland.

15 January 2016

'Shetland': the Irish connections


There are plenty of Irish connections in the new series of Shetland, which begins on BBC One at 9pm tonight. Film director Thaddeus O'Sullivan takes charge of the opening three episodes, and Ciaran Hinds plays one of the prime suspects.

14 January 2016

Ireland's oldest crime fiction debut?


Norah McMullan is quite possibly Ireland's oldest new crime fiction novelist in recent years. Her first two novels were published in 2014 when she was 79.

13 January 2016

How an old Irish myth became a crime novel


Guest post: Alan Walsh on how he reworked the Irish legend of Deirdre of the Sorrows into a modern crime tale for his debut novel 'Sour'

It was definitely moving back home that encouraged me to write Sour in its final form. It's funny how you think of these things much later and what really dawns on you is the effect certain things had that you never noticed at the time.

11 January 2016

Lenny Abrahamson to direct Hugh Laurie


Leading Irish film-maker Lenny Abrahamson has been lined up to direct several episodes of Hulu's forthcoming psychological thriller Chance. It stars Hugh Laurie as yet another troubled doctor, Eldon Chance, and is based on Kem Nunn’s 2014 novel.

7 January 2016

'PC Lynch': a paranormal police procedural



Irish writer James Nally's unusual first novel Alone With the Dead (2015) is a paranormal police procedural set in 1991. Its central character is a young Irishman in the Met, PC Donal Lynch, and the action switches back and forth between London and the Irish Midlands.

6 January 2016

'The Fall' begins filming again in Belfast


The third season of The Fall has begun filming in Belfast. Jamie Dornan and Gillian Anderson return as serial killer Paul Spector and Detective Superintendent Gibson in Allan Cubitt’s five-part psychological thriller.

4 January 2016

Channel 4 launches 'Walter Presents'


While BBC 4 has shown a clear demand for foreign-language crime shows such as the original Wallander, Borgen and The Bridge, Channel 4 upped the ante this week with the launch of its new online channel Walter Presents.