Author profile: Tana French

Tana French is an actor and best-selling crime fiction writer, whose books are noted for their strong characters and intriguing whodunnits.

Her award-winning debut novel, the psychological mystery In the Woods (2007), introduces the Rob Ryan character, though the follow-up The Likeness (2009) shifted focus to Ryan's partner Cassie Maddox. The third and fourth books continue the trend, making a previously secondary character the new protagonist.

"Tana French’s In The Woods would make a great movie, but you’d have to make sure that Cecilia Ahern wasn’t taken on to write the script." - John Gaynard

Enclosed communities often feature in French's novels - for example the title of Broken Harbour (2012) refers to a fictional ghost estate on the outskirts of Balbriggan. French says this reflects her own peripatetic childhood. She was born in the US and also grew up in Ireland, Italy and Malawi.

She has lived in Dublin since 1990. She trained as a professional actor at Trinity College Dublin, and has worked in theatre, film and voiceover.

"Her Dublin Murder Squad series brilliantly anatomises modern Ireland and its uneasy relationship between past and present."

- The Guardian

• Official author website: Tanafrench.com
• Tana French on Twitter: @tanafrench

Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad set for TV

Euston Films’ Kate Harwood has joined forces with Alan Gasmer and Peter Jaysen of Veritas Entertainment to make a television series based on three of Tana French's murder mysteries, reports Deadline.com.

Harwood, Euston's Managing Director, is a former head of BBC Drama Production. Her credits include Luther and Criminal Justice.

From the 1970s to 1994 Euston Films was a prestige production house that began as a subsidiary of Thames Television. It had a  reputation for groundbreaking drama, including The Sweeney, Minder and Widows. It re-launched in September 2014 as a new label within FremantleMedia UK.

The three producers are meeting UK and US broadcasters and say they have a list of writers in mind.

The three Tana French novels - In The Woods, The Likeness and Faithful Place - are set in the fictional Dublin Murder Squad. While each book follows a different case they include overlapping characters and storylines. The books have sold more than five million copies worldwide.

BBC green light for Tana French drama series

The BBC has given the green light for an eight-part adaptation of Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series of novels. Deadline reports that filming will begin in Dublin and Belfast next year. Euston Films and Veritas Entertainment Group optioned the rights in 2015 and have joined up with Irish production company Element Pictures.

Tana French and Graham Norton in book awards

#BGEIBA The Trespasser by @tanafrench takes home the @BGEIBAS @booksaremybag Crime Fiction Book of the Year @HachetteIre pic.twitter.com/ln7tAQO3Qj

— Bord Gáis Energy (@BordGaisEnergy) 16 November 2016

The Trespasser by Tana French has won the crime category in the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards. Graham Norton's debut novel Holding was winner in the Popular Fiction Book of the Year category, and Liz Nugent's Lying in Wait took the "Ryan Tubridy Show Listener’s Choice" award.

BOTM: 'The Trespasser' by Tana French

Our October Book of the Month: The Trespasser.

The author: Tana French.

Book 6 in Tana French's Murder Squad series

The sixth book in Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad series, The Trespasser, is due out on 11 August 2016. This time the main narrator switches to Antoinette Conway, the tough, abrasive, working-class detective featured in The Secret Place (2014).

Conway is working well with detective Stephen Moran, but the rest of the murder squad are closing ranks to get rid of her. After the duo get a case that looks like a routine lovers' tiff, they realise someone in the squad is trying to steer the investigation.

Tana French on 'The Secret Place'

Tana French's fifth Dublin Murder Squad novel, The Secret Place, has been shortlisted as Best Novel in both the Anthony Awards and Strand Magazine Awards. Here are six interviews (not video) about her latest murder mystery:

Our crime fiction books and shows of 2016

2016 was another bumper year for Irish crime fiction, from a wide range of newcomers to the latest offerings by the likes of Tana French and Adrian McKinty. It also saw the publication of Trouble Is Our Business, a terrific anthology of short stories edited by Declan Burke. Here are our picks of the year.

Voting for best Irish crime fiction novel

Online voting is currently under way for this year's Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards, including the crime fiction shortlist.

Irish detective novels come to the Big Apple

Authors John Connolly, Declan Hughes and Stuart Neville will be taking part in the New York launch of the academic collection of essays The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel and Neville's latest novel So Say the Fallen.

New academic study of Irish detective novels

The Contemporary Irish Detective Novel is a forthcoming academic collection of essays published by Palgrave Macmillan.

'Consuming Crime' at University of Limerick

"Consuming Crime" is a major academic conference on crime fiction at the University of Limerick on 26-27 June 2015.

A session on "Irish Crime and the Celtic Tiger" features papers on greed and corruption in Alan Glynn’s Winterland; Tana French and the crime novel in the wake of Eurozone consumerism; and "(Post-) Celtic Tiger Dublin in Recent Irish Crime Fiction".

Author profile: Erin Hart

"I first heard the story in the summer of 1986: two brothers cutting turf in the west of Ireland stumbled upon the perfectly-preserved, severed head of a beautiful red-haired girl." - Erin Hart on the real-life story that inspired her first novel, Haunted Ground

Erin Hart's crime novels feature American pathologist Nora Gavin and Irish archaeologist Cormac Maguire, who are engaged in the recovery of artefacts and human remains from boglands.