Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction. In 2012 he published his first Sean Duffy novel The Cold Cold Ground set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. It was the first in a successful series about the Royal Ulster Constabulary Sergeant. He has won numerous awards for his work including the Edgar Award and The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2020. This year he also won the International Thriller Writers Award for Best Hardcover Novel for The chain. The chain is published by Orion Books and is also available from Suffolk Libraries.

Who were your literary influences as you were growing up?

When I was a kid I mostly read science fiction. Golden era sci fi that you could get in the local library. So Asimov, Heinlein, Le Guin, Herbert that kind of thing. In my teens I started reading Philip K Dick and JG Ballard and Angela Carter from them I began to read more literary fiction.

Your journey to literary success was not an easy one. Looking back do you think it helped shape the writer you are now?

Yeah I don't want to be deliberately provocative here but I think coming from a wealthy background is a huge disadvantage to a writer. Or at least one who wants to be mimetic. Posh writers, comedians, directors are often completely tone deaf when it comes to dialogue or situations. There is a solution of course and that's to do an Orwell who went to Eton but who lived as a vagabond for a year and whose dialogue and perceptions have always been spot on.

Where did the idea for The Chain come from?

I grew up terrified by chain letters in superstitious rural Ireland and when I was looking for a subject for a standalone I wondered if chain letters could work in a contemporary era with higher stakes and it snowballed from there.

I have to ask about Detective Inspector Sean Duffy who is beloved by his many fans. Will you be setting any more novels in Belfast?

Oh yes. I'm writing three more books (a final trilogy) and I'm hoping to have the first of those done and published next year.

Is there anything you can share about your next project?

Over the summer I wrote about 30,000 words of a new Duffy that I'll edit down to about 20,000 workable prose that I think will be the beginning of Duffy 8. Its set in the uneasy Northern Ireland of the 1990s when peace seemed possible but violence was still on the horizon. The tone is somewhere between Derry Girls (also set in the 90s) and Apocalypse Now.

What is the best advice you were ever given?

The great Brooklyn philosopher Mike Tyson said it best "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

Can you tell us one thing about yourself that your readers may not know?

I played rugby once for the Jerusalem Lions rugby team against a team from the Fijian Army in no mans land In Lebanon at the Fijian Army UN base there. We were beaten 70:3. The Chain is published by Orion Books and is also available from Suffolk Libraries.