Andrew Hughes pens second historical crime novel

The Coroner's Daughter is Andrew Hughes's follow-up to his debut novel, The Convictions of John Delahunt (2013). Due to be published in February 2017, it features a young female sleuth operating at the dawn of modern forensic science.

Toby Jones in Conrad's 'The Secret Agent'

The first episode of BBC 1's lavish new adaptation of Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent goes out on 9 p.m. on Sunday, 17 July 2016.

A blast from the past: Raymond Queneau

An unusual historical treatment of Ireland's Easter Rising is the 1947 novel We Always Treat Women Too Well (On est toujours trop bon avec les femmes).

A Dublin gothic murder mystery

Caroline Barry, author of two YA novels (The Rocket Girl and Isadora Elzbeth), makes her first foray into adult fiction with The Dolocher.

Next 'Stefan Gillespie' novel on the way

The City in Darkness by Michael Russell is due to be published in May 2016, and is the third in his series of "Stefan Gillespie" historical detective novels.

Christmas 1939. 

Europe is in the "Phoney War". In Ireland, Detective Inspector Stefan Gillespie is keeping tabs on Irishmen joining the British Forces and closing down a Gate Theatre production of a play that has "offended" the German ambassador. He is all the more uncomfortable because Kate O’Donnell now works at the Gate.

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".

'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.

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.

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.

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.

Vaughan-Lawlor to star in 'The Secret Agent'

Love/Hate star Tom Vaughan-Lawlor plays an anarchist in the BBC's new adaptation of Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent.

10 facts about Benjamin Black

1. Black is the alter ego of Booker prize-winning novelist John Banville. His "Quirke" series about a pathologist is set mainly in 1950s Ireland.

2. He began writing his first Quirke book in March 2005 - the same year that his 14th novel, The Sea, won the Booker Prize. This first Quirke novel was based on a screenplay for an earlier TV mini-series that never got made, and became Christine Falls (2007).

'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.

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.

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.

The London-Irish cop Cathal 'Paddy' Breen

"Shaw skilfully recreates an era of social turmoil and class conflict" 
- The Sunday Times

William Shaw’s "Breen and Tozer" trilogy, set in late 1960s London, features a second-generation Irish detective sergeant in Marylebone CID called Cathal Breen.

Author profile: Gerard Murphy

Cork-born writer Gerard Murphy's day job is as a lecturer in the Institute of Technology Carlow's School of Science and Health.

His first crime novel is Death Without Trace (2005), in the American hardboiled tradition:

Michael A. Madigan is a supervisor in a Dublin brewery, recently separated and a part-time private eye. He listens to the news in Irish because he doesn't want to know what's going on in the world. 

But when the wealthy, attractive wife of a professor of neurobiology asks him to tail her husband, Madigan is soon caught up in the dirty underworld of serious crime.  

Irish crime fiction set in... Nova Scotia

Anne Emery is a Canadian writer whose crime novels have a strong Irish slant but are squarely aimed at a North American audience. Her "Collins-Burke" series is mainly set in Nova Scotia, and occasionally Ireland or London.

Andrew Hughes's thriller from Victorian Dublin

"Kafka" / "Kafkaesque" often pops up in reviews of Andrew Hughes's historical thriller set in Victorian Dublin, The Convictions of John Delahunt (2013).

Author profile: David Lawlor

David Lawlor's "Liam Mannion" series of historical novels is set in the early 20th century. Tan (2014) opens in Mannion's home village of Balbriggan in north Dublin in 1914.