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.

30 November 2015

BOTM: 'After the Fire' by Jane Casey


Our November "Book of the Month": After The Fire.

The author: Jane Casey.

The genre: police procedural, murder mystery.

26 November 2015

Jane Casey wins Irish crime book of year


Jane Casey's After the Fire was the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year in the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards last night.

25 November 2015

Author profile: Kate O’Riordan



Irish writer Kate O’Riordan's day job is as a writer and executive producer on the hit ITV/PBS show Mr Selfridge.

Her other screenwriting credits include The Return (2003), the Dublin-set drama starring Julie Walters as a former alcoholic returning home after 10 years in prison for killing her violent husband. The cast included Neil Dudgeon, Ger Ryan and Pauline McLynn.

24 November 2015

The return of Inspector Celcius Daly


Silence, the third book in Anthony J. Quinn's "Inspector Celcius Daly" series, comes out in hardback this month and has already been picked by Easons as one of the best Irish novels of the year.

19 November 2015

Brendan Gleeson in Ben Affleck's next movie


Deadline.com has reported that Brendan Gleeson has joined the cast of Live By Night, Ben Affleck's adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel. The book was published in 2012 and won an Edgar Award for novel of the year.

Gleeson will play a prominent Boston police captain whose defiant son Joe Coughlin (Affleck) climbs a ladder of organised crime in the Prohibition era.

18 November 2015

Final book in Joe Joyce's 'Echoland' series


Joe Joyce has completed his "Echoland" trilogy of historical thrillers with Echowave, now out as an ebook and available in December as a paperback.

17 November 2015

40th anniversary edition of 'Harry's Game'


Gerald Seymour's debut novel Harry’s Game (1975), the first big bestseller about the modern troubles in Northern Ireland, has reached a 40th anniversary edition.

16 November 2015

Stuart Neville, Arne Dahl, Eva Dolan on tour


A crime fiction supergroup of Belfast author Stuart Neville, Arne Dahl and Eva Dolan will tour Scotland later this month to discuss everything from terrorism to the fate of refugees.

The "Urban Noir Showcase" will visit Glasgow, Inverness, Oban, East Lothian and Dumbarton from 23-25 November 2015. Full details at Dead Good Books.

13 November 2015

Pat Mullan's latest


Ireland's godfather of crime fiction Ken Bruen describes Pat Mullan's latest conspiracy thriller, A Deadly Gamble (2015), as a "wonderful novel" that "moves like a blast of adrenaline."

12 November 2015

Derry's Inspector Valberg is optioned


Desmond J Doherty’s Derry-based "Valberg" series has been optioned by Revolution Films. The London-based production company was founded by Andrew Eaton and  Michael Winterbottom, and its acclaimed film and TV productions include 24 Hour Party People, 9 Songs and Rush.

11 November 2015

Author profile: Maurice Leitch


Besides being a leading radio drama producer, Maurice Leitch is a prolific fiction writer. He was an early pioneer of Northern noir - dark crime thrillers set in Northern Ireland since the start of the Troubles in the late 1960s.

10 November 2015

Lewis's final case


Inspector Morse spin-off series Lewis ends tonight. ITV has confirmed that stars Kevin Whately and Laurence Fox have decided to retire from the police drama after 10 years playing detective duo Robbie Lewis and James Hathaway.

9 November 2015

The Bridge III

Sofia Helin talks to Nordic Noir & Beyond about The Bridge III. BBC Four will show the new season of the Scandinavian thriller from Saturday 21 November onwards. Spoiler alert: Kim Bodnia (the Martin Rohde character) has definitely left the series.


5 November 2015

'London Spy' for BBC 2


London Spy is a new five-part thriller that begins with a chance romance between two people from very different worlds - one from the intelligence services, the other from a world of clubbing and youthful excess.

4 November 2015

Crime fiction shortlist for BGE Irish Book Awards


The shortlists for the 2015 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards have been announced, including the Ireland AM Crime Fiction shortlist.

3 November 2015

Readings from 'Borderland Noir' anthology


Update: this reading event has been postponed

Johnny Cash makes a guest appearance in Ken Bruen's contribution to Borderland Noir, a new anthology of stories and essays of love and death across the Rio Grande.

2 November 2015

TV3 documentary on Toscan Du Plantier case


A new four-part documentary by leading Irish film director Jim Sheridan about the Sophie Toscan Du Plantier murder case is currently in post-production.

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.

30 September 2015

A Boston and Irish writing duo


Full Irish (2014) is an unusual transatlantic collaboration between authors Susanne O'Leary (based in Ireland) and Pete Morin (in Boston), about a murder investigation that spans their two countries.

29 September 2015

BOTM: 'Asking For It' by Louise O'Neill


Our September "Book of the Month": Asking For It.

The author: Louise O'Neill

The genre: a dark psychological tale about "sexual consent and betrayal, victim blaming and truth in the age of the smartphone".

28 September 2015

'Deutschland 83' for Channel 4


Channel 4 is to show the brilliant Cold War thriller Deutschland 83 to launch "Walter Presents", its new video streaming brand showcasing foreign-language drama.

26 September 2015

Stellan Skarsgård on playing John River



London-based police officer John River has a mental disorder. He doesn't just hear voices - he actually sees crime victims, who pop up and have conversations with him. But they’re not like ghosts - they are still his own creations.

Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård talks about his title role in River, BBC One's very unusual new six-part crime thriller which starts on 13 October.

24 September 2015

A Dublin evening with Louise O'Neill


Louise O'Neill's latest novel Asking For It is currently garnering rave reviews. The Irish Writers Centre in Dublin is hosting an evening in which she talks about the book with journalist Martin Doyle and members of the Irish Times Book Club.

Thursday 8 October, 7.30 pm
Irish Writers Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin
Tickets €5 / €3 via Eventbrite, or €7 on the door (includes a glass of wine).

23 September 2015

Luther and Sherlock are back


BBC One's new autumn schedule includes the returns (sort of) of Luther and Sherlock.

22 September 2015

Crime thriller about a Dublin undertaker


Dublin-born writer Jeremy Massey comes from a long family line of funeral directors.

He draws on this working knowledge for his debut novel, The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley (2015). It's a quirky crime thriller, a black comedy crossed with a love story set in Dublin.

21 September 2015

Frankie Gaffney's D7 thriller


Out this week, Frankie Gaffney's debut novel Dublin Seven (Liberties Press) is a coming-of-age gangster tale set at the end of the Celtic Tiger era.

18 September 2015

Michael Collins in Anthony Quinn's latest


Anthony Quinn takes another break from his Northern Ireland based "DI Celcius Daly" series for his latest book, due out next week. Blind Arrows is a historical crime novel set in Dublin in 1919 during the War of Independence.