31 July 2015

Trailer for Emma Donoghue's 'The Room'



A teaser trailer has been released for The Room, which is inspired by the real-life crimes of Austrian Josef Fritzl.

Director Lenny Abrahamson's new film is based on Irish writer Emma Donoghue's novel and screenplay.

30 July 2015

Cillian Murphy, Jamie Dornan in WWII drama


Not one but two films are currently in production about Operation Anthropoid, the assassination attempt on leading Nazi Reinhard Heydrich during World War II.

Both films feature leading Irish actors as the pair of Czech and Slovak-born paratroopers who were parachuted into their homeland to hunt down Heydrich, "The Butcher of Prague".

29 July 2015

Julian Barnes on 'Duffy' and Dan Kavanagh


Dan Kavanagh's "Duffy" series of private eye novels from the 1980s is set firmly in the Britain of the time. Duffy is an ex-cop, bisexual at a time when not many PI characters were, and with a phobia of ticking watches, an obsessive attitude to cleanliness and a thing about Tupperware.

28 July 2015

Blast from the past: Jack Barry / John Maher

Award-winning Irish writer John Maher has written one crime novel under the pseudonym Jack Barry. Miss Katie Regrets (2006) features Garda detective Thomas Barrett.
An apparently humdrum shooting of an ex-paramilitary drugs campaigner leads Barrett to an online male prostitution service and a quashed political scandal from the 1970s that led to Barrett's father's death.
At the centre of the web of intrigue sits Miss Katie, a crabby Dublin transvestite.

27 July 2015

Author profile: Kate Winter

Although Kate Winter's debut novel, The Happy Ever Afterlife of Rosie Potter (RIP), is being packaged and marketed as "chick lit", she describes it as a blend of genres, "a romantic, supernatural, Irish, black-comedy whodunnit".
When Rosie Potter wakes up one morning with what she assumes is the world's worst hangover, the last thing she expects is to discover that she's actually dead. 
Many other secrets are buried in the quiet Irish village of Ballycarragh, where nobody is as innocent as they appear. Aided by the unlikeliest of allies, Rosie discovers that life after death isn't all it's cracked up to be...

24 July 2015

The success of Nordic Noir (in a nutshell)

New to Nordic Noir? This short video explains why Scandinavian crime fiction has become such a global success.

Kerstin Bergman from Lund University in Sweden also recommends some lesser known Swedish authors to include in your summer reading.

23 July 2015

Agatha Christie night in Waterford


"125 Years of Agatha Christie" is an evening event this September at the Theatre Royal in Waterford.

22 July 2015

James Nesbitt to star in Stan Lee thriller


Comicbook legend Stan Lee has created an unusual cop character for Sky 1. In Lucky Man the Irish actor James Nesbitt plays a down-on-his-luck murder detective who discovers he can control luck.

21 July 2015

BOTM: 'Disappeared' by Anthony J Quinn



Our July "Book of the Month": Disappeared (first published in the US, 2012).

The author: Anthony J Quinn.

20 July 2015

Latest Louise Phillips: 'The Game Changer'


What if you went missing but couldn't remember anything? That's the premise of award-winning author Louise Philips's forthcoming psychological crime thriller, The Game Changer.

16 July 2015

'Sister Fidelma' series reaches 25th book


Peter Tremayne's "Sister Fidelma Mysteries" series about a seventh-century sleuth nun (or religieuse as he prefers) is now on its 25th book. The Devil's Seal will be released in US hardback on 28 July 2015.

15 July 2015

Video for Jax Miller's 'Freedom's Child'

Jax Miller's debut novel Freedom's Child is already enjoying rave reviews. The Guardian's Laura Wilson praises its "raw vitality" and rates it "one of the standout debuts of the year".

Here's the video trailer for the crime thriller, which is released on 30 July.

14 July 2015

Harriet La Barre / Dicey Deere (1916-2015)


Dicey Deere was the "Irish" nom-de-plume in her later life of Harriet La Barre, the American journalist, travel writer and novelist who died last month at the age of 99.

13 July 2015

Steve Cavanagh at the BritCrime festival


Belfast writer Steve Cavanagh has been making waves with his debut novel The Defence (2015), the legal thriller set in New York City featuring former con-artist turned trial lawyer Eddie Flynn.

At the weekend Steve took part in the first BritCrime crime fiction festival on Facebook. Here are some edited highlights from the online session - including his plans for book two...

10 July 2015

Normany noir series 'Witnesses' heads to C4


Channel 4 has picked up the acclaimed French crime series Les Témoins (Witnesses).

When the Third Reich invaded Wales


Irish author Brendan Gerad O’Brien's debut novel Dark September (2014) is an alternate history thriller set in wartime Britain under German invasion.

9 July 2015

Jonathan Dunne on making a book trailer



Jonathan Dunne explains on Writing.ie how he decided to join a growing number of crime fiction writers who use low-budget video to promote their books, and how he went about making the 90-second trailer for his debut novel The Takeover.

Read our Q&A with Jonathan about his work.

8 July 2015

Ava McCarthy's latest will be a 'Dead Secret'

Ava McCarthy, author of the PI Harry Martinez series, switches to a psychological suspense thriller with Dead Secret, which is due out this November:
Two quick shots. One for him. One for you. 
After the death of her three-year-old daughter, Jodie has nothing to live for. Before taking her own life she must kill the man she holds responsible for her daughter’s death – her seemingly perfect husband Ethan...

7 July 2015

Author profile: Conor Brady


With his many real-life police connections to the Garda Síochána (Ireland's police force) and its Ombudsman Commission, former Irish Times editor Conor Brady decided to set his "Joe Swallow" crime fiction series in late Victorian Dublin rather than contemporary Ireland.

6 July 2015

Petros Markaris, the Greek master of crime


"If you really want to find out what is going in Greece right now. Markaris is your man. And if you love high quality crime fiction he can definitely deliver the goods."
- Lakis Fourouklas in CriminalElement.com
Not greatly known in the English-speaking world, Petros Markaris is the grand master of modern crime fiction in Greece.

2 July 2015

Blast from the past: Gareth O'Callaghan

Irish radio DJ Gareth O'Callaghan has written books in several genres, including three crime novels from the late 1990s.

1 July 2015

Inky Black, the PI from East Belfast


Brad Fleming's eccentric East Belfast-based private eye Inky Black has his first full-length outing in The Case Files of Inky Black (2014).