Best of the Year Lists

I've made a couple of best of the year lists that I thought I should tell you about. I mean why not, right? It's nearly Christmas and you may be looking to get books for people as last minute presents...I appreciate that I am not exactly a trustworthy source regarding the quality of my own material so instead of taking my word for it why not put your faith in some national media sources instead... 

1. The Mail On Sunday (Britain's best selling Sunday newspaper) has picked In The Morning I'll Be Gone as one of its top 5 mysteries of 2014. This is very nice of the Mail as the rec comes with a huge big pic of the book (thanks to my mum for telling me about this).  

2. The Toronto Star (Canada's top selling newspaper (so says my buddy John McFetridge who spotted this one)) has also picked In The Morning I'll Be Gone as one of the best mysteries of 2014.


3. Slate Magazine has picked The Sun Is God as #2 on its list of Neglected Books of 2014. Thanks to Seana Graham for spotting this one. 


4. Booklist, the magazine of the American Library Association, has picked In The Morning I'll Be Gone as its #3 mystery of 2014. 


5. ABC Radio: The great Angela Savage - ABC's crime reviewer - picked In The Morning I'll Be Gone as one of her top five mysteries of 2014. 


6. The Australian (the best selling broadsheet newspaper in the country) picked In The Morning I'll Be Gone as one of its top 6 summer reads of the year. 


Both of these books, of course, are available at good bookshops or at the usual online retailers. 

Review This Book!

Hey folks, I'd really appreciate some reviews of my novel The Sun Is God on amazon, amazon.co.uk or good reads. All the time on Twitter I get asked "how come you don't write more standalone" novels and my answer is usually because nobody bloody buys them! Readers prefer series and although I enjoy writing standalones more than series (because you dont know what is going to happen at the end) I probably won't do any more of them if they just continue to tank in sales...As of this writing I have 2 reviews for SIG on Amazon.com (a 3 star and a grumpy 2 star) and 4 reviews on amazon.co.uk (an average of 4 stars). I have a feeling that this book might resonate a little better with British readers who understand the context (and how people used to talk in 1906) but hopefully all the American readers wont be as annoying as Ms 2 star above. 
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This little appeal is my version of kickstarter. I'm not asking for your money in return for a stupid T shirt, all I'd like is a minute or two of your time to review one of my books. C'mon people, I've got 269 followers on here and I get a healthy number of comments for every blog post. I've never once charged for content and I've pretty much responded to every comment I've gotten over the last 5 years, so do me a friggin solid, eh? 
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As a weird little standalone with an unconventional untrendy setting, I havent had many newspaper reviews either of The Sun Is God but I did get nice notices in The Times and The Irish Times and I'm copying the entire review from David Prestidge on CFL below because this was a reviewer who really got what I was trying to do: 
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Adrian McKinty has made his name with three crime trilogies, the latest of which featured Catholic cop Sean Duffy in the midst of sectarian turmoil in 1980s Belfast. So, The Sun is God is a bit of a departure. Here we meet Will Prior, once a junior officer in The Military Foot Police who served during The Boer War.

When he becomes involved in a  serious incident at a concentration camp set up by the British to contain the Boers near Bloemfontein, he becomes a hero overnight, at least in the eyes of his military superiors. For Prior, however, it is the start of a nightmare both literal and metaphorical. Angrily casting aside his Distinguished Service Order he gets himself dismissed from service and seeks a new life in the colonies.

Prior fetches up in a place which McKinty describes (from personal experience) as being as close to hell on earth without there being devils dancing around with sharp tridents. German New Guinea in 1906 was hot, wet, malarial and home to every kind of flying, stinging, scuttling insect and arthropod. Prior is manager of an ailing rubber plantation near the principal settlement of Herbertshöhe. His days are spent languidly enough, living with his native servant-mistress, Siwa, but his peace is disturbed when government officer Hauptmann Kessler seeks his assistance.

Prior’s police background is useful to the colonial administrators. Corpses are ten-a-penny in Herbertshöhe, but one particular mortuary resident is causing Governor Hahl concern. On a tiny island ten miles away, an eccentric group of sun worshippers have set up a community dedicated to becoming one with nature, and eating only coconut. They call themselves The Cocovores. One of them has died, ostensibly of malaria, and the corpse has been sent back to the main island for burial. The postmortem reveals that Herr Lutzow actually died from drowning so Governor Hahl despatches Prior, Kessler, and a visiting English anthropologist, Bessie Pullen-Burry, to investigate.

the real life August Engelhardt, leader of the Cocovores...

The mismatched trio find a bizarre world of nakedness, drug taking, totem worship, and a relaxed view of sexuality. Alarmingly, Miss Pullen-Burry begins to join in, while Prior and Kessler struggle with both the debilitating climate and the charismatic Cocovore leader – August Englehardt. Answers of any kind, let alone straight ones, about the death of Lutzow are impossible to find.

Surprisingly, many of the characters in The Sun is God actually existed, and the broad events described are largely factual. In the author’s preface, however, he states that ‘where the interests of the novel and strict historical accuracy have collided I have put the demands of the former first.’

Don’t be deterred by McKinty’s enigmatic assertion that the crime remains unsolved to this day. Here, the crime is solved, and with great effect, in one of the best climaxes to a novel I have read in a long time. I do wonder if this is more a period drama than a crime novel, but of one thing I am certain – this is brilliant writing. There is wonderful sleight of hand in the final pages, when rescue comes from an unlikely source. McKinty handles the mood and tone like a master. There is wry comedy, social satire, horror, compassion and tension. This is a brave and successful change of direction from a fine writer, who spoke to us about his earlier work here.

Serpent’s Tail
Print/Kindle
£2.57

CFL Rating: 5 Stars
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Anyway if you can help me out with an amazon or good reads review I wd really appreciate it, esp Amazon.com where the combined 2 1/2 star rating looks like shit and now that Amazon mirror their reviews over onto audible and amazon.co.uk its a real PR disaster...
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And if you'd like to review any of my other books, well, I'd very much appreciate that too. 

go raibh maith agat

George McFly Day

What is George McFly Day? It's the bit in Back To The Future where George McFly's box of books arrives from his publisher and his career as a science fiction writer becomes a reality. If you remember the film, in one version of the present George doesn't follow his dreams to become a writer because he's afraid of failure, but in the altered version of the present a more courageous George McFly does pursue his ambition and when his box of books comes it's a kind of vindication. This particular George McFly day is for my book The Sun Is God which is a murder mystery novel set in the South Pacific of 1906 among a group of aristocratic German nudists who believed that eating only coconuts would make them immortal. Amazingly this is a true story which I have only slightly fictionalised.
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You can read the first newspaper review of The Sun Is God, here. It's from the knowledgeable Declan Burke in The Irish Times. Money quote: 

Based on an improbable but true story, the novel offers a fascinating twist on the traditional “locked room” mystery, as only the island’s miserable few inhabitants can be considered suspects in the alleged murder. Prior, as reluctant a sleuth as has ever shuffled into the genre, makes for a blackly humorous guide to a palm-fringed, sun-drenched idyll that is both heaven and hell. McKinty’s novel is an ambitious offering that incorporates a terrific subplot exploring pre-first World War colonial tensions between Britain and Germany. But it’s the investigation of the central mystery, with its undertones of Paradise Lost, that proves most entertaining.

The Sun Is God

My new novel, the third Sean Duffy book, In The Morning I'll Be Gone will be out later this week. But the question they always ask you in interviews is what's next? Since this is the end of Duffy (for now!) I'll tell you what's next. Its a standalone mystery based on a true story set in the German colony of Neu Guinea in 1906. This is how the book is described on Amazon.co.uk: 

It is 1906 and Will Prior is in self-imposed exile on a remote South Pacific island, working a small, and failing, plantation. He should never have told anyone about his previous existence as a military foot policeman in the Boer War, but a man needs friends, even if they are as stuffy and, well, German, as Hauptmann Kessler, the local government representative. So it is that Kessler approaches Will one hot afternoon, with a request for his help with a problem on a neighbouring island, inhabited by a reclusive, cultish group of European 'cocovores', who believe that naked sun worship and eating only coconuts will bring them eternal life. Unfortunately, one of their number has died in suspicious circumstances, and Kessler has been tasked with uncovering the real reason for his demise. So along with a 'lady traveller', Bessie Pullen-Burry, who is foisted on them by the archipelago's eccentric owner, they travel to the island of Kabakon, to find out what is really going on.

Incidentally Amazon claims this is a July 2015 release but its not, it's coming out this July... And in the meantime please don't forget my new Sean Duffy coming out in a few days!
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February 5 Update:
I've changed this blogpost to include the actual Serpents Tail cover - a cover I really like.