Liam Neeson set to play Philip Marlowe

Variety has revealed that Liam Neeson is to play Philip Marlowe in the screen adaptation of The Black-Eyed Blonde. John Banville's novel - writing as Benjamin Black - is based on the iconic private eye character originally created by  Raymond Chandler.

15th Charlie Parker novel is due next April

A Game of Ghosts, John Connolly's 15th novel featuring Charlie Parker, his haunted PI from Maine, will be published in the UK and Ireland on 6 April 2017, and in the US about four months later.

'The Black-Eyed Blonde' for the big screen

Scannain.com reports that leading Irish director John Crowley and The Departed screenwriter William Monahan have been lined up for a feature film version of The Black-Eyed Blonde, John Banville's 2014 novel written as Benjamin Black.

Maureen Martella's 'Annie McHugh' PI series

Maureen Martella's "Annie McHugh, PI" series veers towards cosy and romantic comedy. It beings with Annie's New Life (2000).

Harry Edger, Belfast PI

Neal Martin's recently published conspiracy thriller Souls At Zero (also available as Dead Reckoning) is set in modern-day Belfast.

BOTM: Neil Jordan's 'The Drowned Detective'

Our April 2016 Book of the Month: The Drowned Detective.

The author: writer and film-maker Neil Jordan.

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.

BOTM: 'Ghost Flight' by Mel Healy

Our October "Book of the Month": Ghost Flight.

The author: Mel Healy.

The genre: murder mystery, private eye.

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.

More on Neil Jordan's detective novel

Bloomsbury has released further details about Neil Jordan's novel The Drowned Detective, due out next February.

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.

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.

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.

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.  

Cormac Millar on 'Sister Caravaggio'

Last April's Franco-Irish Literary Festival had a crime fiction theme. Here Cormac Millar talks - in French - about his novels and the current state of Irish crime fiction.

But first he explains how he worked on Sister Caravaggio (2014), the collaborative novel about a group of nuns who become sleuths.



Other writers on the light-hearted crime tale  included Peter Cunningham, the late Maeve Binchy, Mary O’Donnell,  Peter Sheridan and Éilís Ní Dhuibhne.

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.

Mel Healy's new novelette: 'Way To Go'

The Kindle version of Ghost Flight, the latest novel in Mel Healy's series featuring Dublin PI Moss Reid, also includes a new novelette, Way To Go.

New crime novel by Neil Jordan

Author and film director Neil Jordan has turned to crime fiction with his latest novel The Drowned Detective.

Dublin dates for Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith will be giving a talk in the Smock Alley Theatre on 21 May as part of the 2015 ILFD (International Literature Festival Dublin).

He will also give a free reading at the Abbey Presbyterian Church on Parnell Square North on 20 May at 6.30pm for "Words on the Street - European Literature Night".

Some Håkan Nesser interviews

"There is no such thing as a Swedish way of writing a crime story," says best-selling Swedish writer Håkan Nesser.