Sunday, December 18, 2022
Sunday, December 4, 2022
Thursday, July 14, 2022
Monday, May 30, 2022
The New York Times review of The Island
Thursday, May 26, 2022
Tuesday, May 3, 2022
Absolutely Thrilled That The Island Has Been Named A Best Thriller of the Year (and its not even out yet)
Friday, April 29, 2022
The Island Coming May 17
So, my novel The Island will be out in May. Its a thematic sequel to The Chain. Not a sequel but a thematic sequel...I cannot say more w/out providing spoilers. So far its gotten starred reviews in the trades, in both Booklist and Publishers Weekly. And Time Magazine has picked it as one of its books to read in May... Both the PW and Booklist reviews are v spoilerific but this one isn't so bad:
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Saturday, April 2, 2022
Monday, February 28, 2022
Friday, January 21, 2022
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Sean Duffy News & An Embarrassing Apology
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My plan was to take a hiatus from the Duffy books and write two standalones and then return to the Duffy series possibly publishing book 7 in 2021, book 8 in 2022 and a final book 9 in 2023. I wrote the first standalone called The Chain which appeared in 2019 and the second was due to come out in early 2021.
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The Covid 19 pandemic however has wrecked pretty much every publishing schedule and my books were no exception. Obviously a novelists plans are small potatoes compared to a global catastrophe. The purpose of this blog is not for me to complain about the industry but to apologize to Duffy readers and to explain why I have NOT kept my promise to publish a new Sean Duffy in 2021.
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This is not the same situation as some better known writers who keep tinkering with their text and can't let it go to the public. Book 7 of the Duffy series is in fact finished and Book 8 is pretty much done. Indeed *early versions of these novels have already appeared in German where the legal issues are a bit simpler to navigate.
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I am NOT going to make another foolish promise here. I'm deeply embarrassed that I have let people down by saying that Duffy 7 was going to come out by the autumn of 2021 which obviously it is not. Instead of making another promise I'm just going to tentatively say that Duffy 7 may be out in late 2022.
The titles of the last 3 Duffy books are (as usual) all lyrics from Tom Waits songs. They are:
THE DETECTIVE UP LATE
HANG ON ST CHRISTOPHER
THE GHOSTS OF SATURDAY NIGHT
Once again, I apologize for letting down the Duffy fans and making promises I did not keep. Its feeble to read it here in print but these really were circumstances beyond my control. I have learned my lesson. From now on I wont guarantee a book coming until I get my box of copies from the publisher.
Thank you for your patience,
Adrian...
Sunday, August 8, 2021
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
be safe in 2021
2020 kicked our ass but if you're reading this then by god you're still alive and kicking.
I hope you stay safe and sane in 2021.
I know I haven't been very productive in 2020, I've kind of been hunkering down with my family but as the situation improves I will try to do better in the new year with new books and short stories.
And if I make it to Ireland this year I promise I'll conduct that free walking tour of the Duffyverse that we were planning for 2020.
Please look after yourselves until then.
Sláinte is táinte...
Friday, October 16, 2020
Party of Five
I'm afraid I cannot be my usual glib, sarcastic self today. I'm in shock. (Happy shock.)
Over the last 48 hours The Chain won the Ned Kelly Award, The Barry Award and The Macavity Award to go with the Theakston Crime Novel of the Year Award and the ITW Crime Novel of the Year Award.
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I can only express my gratitude to all the judges of these wonderful awards and of course a huge thank you to my loyal readers for sticking by me in the dark times.
Heartfelt love and thanks...Adrian...
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Crime Novel of The Year
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I am so grateful to every reader who has ever read any of my books. I am so grateful for every single review I've ever gotten (even the 1 stars, you know who you are, Kenny) and I am so lucky I stuck at this gig when I basically quit 2 1/2 years ago.
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If you're a writer let me tell you its a long, tough, lonely road especially if you want to make a career out of it and you'll want to quit 1000 times but hang in there, if good things can happen to me they can happen to you too. I am blessed. Go raibh maith agat.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
why i write
But this is not my way.
I see things differently.
For me writing is nothing to do with deadlines and word counts and getting the job done. For me a writer is a shaman. A holy man. A holy woman. A witch. A writer has been given a staff made from meteor iron and with that stick she scratches a message into clay tablets and the tablets are baked and they are put in a library and the river moves and the city fails and the library’s pillars fall and the clay tablets lie buried in the sand for four thousand years until someone finds them and reads them and understands. You are telling them a story about life and death and the meaning of life. You are talking to them across the centuries.
Spacetime in our universe began 13 billion years ago and it will last in our universe for many trillions of years and, depending upon the variables of dark energy, it will come to an end in a big crunch or a slow, silent heat death. If Einstein’s equations are to be believed everything we say or do has already been done. The equations work equally well backwards or forwards in time. The universe has already died. And we died trillions of years ago, forgotten utterly, our actions, words, thoughts, completely vanished into the void. This is why what the writer does is sacred. What you’re doing isn’t writing a meaningless string of words. You’re scratching a message in the sand in defiance of the tide and the abyss. You can’t halt entropy but for a moment you can strike a match and wave it furiously in the blackness.
Look, look at this! The writer says. I am gone. We are gone. But we were here and we saw and we loved and laughed and we dreamed. We saw beauty and we experienced pain. And we were given a task by the ones who died next to us in the lifeboat: tell them about us.
Yeah, I know, I just write hack crime novels who am I to talk? But that's the whole point isn't it? It doesn't matter what you write about, it's your attitude. Your words could be smuggled on toilet paper out of prison to one old friend or they could be texted to a million followers as you ride the subway car. It's what you think about the words that counts. An audience of one is still an audience.
So I don’t see writing as just another job. I don’t write to fill my word count. I am on a sacred fucking mission. I’m waiting for the goddess. Because I believe in the goddess. I believe in ghosts. The ghosts of the ones who went before and the ones who have not yet come. And I will witness against the beast. And I will defy the darkness and I will tell our story.
I take up my meteor iron and I scratch marks onto sheets of blank paper and what I do is consecrated.
And I will try very hard to make it good.
Saturday, September 21, 2019
Book reviews...
I understand times are tough for newspapers but I'm hoping that I can work this out with my employers and I can continue to print my book reviews here on the blog...
I promise to keep you updated and I apologize to everyone who has asked on twitter where the paywall free version of some of my reviews are to be found...until further notice perhaps nowhere.
Again I'm REALLY sorry about this. This was never an issue until the last few months.
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
The New York Times reviews The Chain
To Save Her Abducted Daughter, This Heroine Has to Kidnap a New Victim




By Adrian McKinty
357 pages. Mulholland Books/Little, Brown & Company. $28.
Sunday, September 15, 2019
My Interview w Salman Rushdie
I’m up on the 23rd floor of a building in midtown Manhattan. It’s the sleek conference room at Salman Rushdie’s agent’s office. I’ve arrived early for the interview and have laid out my voice recorder, a copy of his new novel, Quichotte, and a list of questions. I’ve circled the words “mastodons” and “New York Yankees”.
Rusdhie is smaller than you’re expecting, with an impish, intelligent smile, and there’s something Tolkienesque about him that you can’t quite put your finger on
I get the impression that a lot of people tell Rushdie they are big fans but that, after a little interrogation, he discovers that they haven’t actually read his stuff
Quichotte is a funny book, maybe Rushdie’s funniest. He has always had a penchant for puns, literary allusions and the like, but the bit with the mastodons had me in stitches


I like complete and utter quiet on a fairly uncluttered desk. I start midmorning, and when I close the door the family knows not to disturb me unless the apartment is on fire