Irish Mystery Fiction

On a rocky beach in the southwest of Ireland, the body of Jimmy O’Reilly, sixty-nine years old and dressed in a suit and his dancing shoes, is propped on a boulder, staring sightlessly out to sea. A cryptic message is spelled out next to the body with sixty-nine polished black stones and a discarded vial of deadly veterinarian medication lies nearby. Jimmy was a wealthy racehorse owner, known far and wide as The Dancing Man. In a town like Dingle, everyone knows a little something about everyone else. But dig a bit deeper, and there’s always much more to find.

In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Natalie's Bistro has always been warm and welcoming. Nowadays twenty-two-year-old Siobhan O'Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago. It's been a rough year for the O'Sullivans, but it's about to get rougher.

Irish Milkshake Murder: In advance of their St. Patrick's Day wedding, Tara and Danny are off to the Aran Islands. The weekend kicks off with the ferry trip, as the passengers enjoy boozy milkshakes on board. Murder Most Irish: As St. Patrick's Day is drawing near, the folks at Hyler's Luncheonette are getting into the holiday spirit with a festive new green milkshake. Mrs. Claus and the Luckless Leprechaun: To celebrate Spring in Santaland, April Claus's friend, Claire, whips up some minty milkshakes for her bustling ice cream shop, Santaland Scoop.

A member of a prominent New Jersey family has been found dead on St. Patrick's Day—and Pamela Paterson and her knitting club have a parade of suspects . . . The Listers have been part of Arborville society for generations—though seventy-something Isobel Lister doesn't fit the role of upper-crust heiress. She's always been a colorful character, and her fun-loving spirit is on display at the senior center celebration as she performs some beloved Irish songs. But just minutes later, her body is found backstage.

Siobhán is looking forward to visiting the new bookshop and curling up with an exciting novel - only to discover the shelves contain nothing but Literature with a capital L. Despite the owner deliberately limiting his clientele, he’s hosting a reading and autographing event featuring up-and-coming Irish writers. Among them is indie author Deirdre Walsh, whose body is found the next day in the back of the store.

In this prequel to the international best seller The Ruin, set 10 years prior, bright-eyed Carrie Ryan is at the very start of her career. When she has a hunch about an ongoing murder investigation, she knows it could be her only chance to prove herself and truly break into the “boys' club” of Dublin’s police force.

American-born Cherise Williams believes herself to be heir to an old Irish earldom, and she's come to Dublin to claim her heritage. Under the circumstances, Megan's boss Olga at Leprechaun Limos has no qualms about overcharging the brash Texas transplant for their services. Megan chauffeurs Cherise to the ancient St. Michan's Church, where the woman intends to get a wee little DNA sample from the mummified earls - much to the horror of the priest. But before she can desecrate the dead, Cherise Williams is murdered - just as her three daughters arrive to also claim their birthright.

Molly’s policeman husband, Daniel, is late returning home. He comes with a tale to tell: There was a murder on Ellis Island that day, and the main suspect is the spitting image of Molly. The circumstances are eerily similar to when Molly herself arrived on Ellis Island, and she can’t help but feel a sense of fate. Molly was meant to be there that day so that she can clear this woman’s name.

Stocking stuffers like handknit scarves make the coziest of Christmas gifts—unless they're used as accessories for murder! When grinchy thefts steal the good cheer at a local nursing home, Siobhan O'Sullivan manages to identify one missing item before the tractor parade—a hideous shamrock scarf wrapped around a very dead body. The festivities go cold at Pans 'N' Pancakes the instant a diner dies while knitting a brilliant green scarf. Suspects pile up when frosty-tempered Carys Walnutt is found strangled by a handmade scarf auctioned at Arborville's tree-lighting ceremony.

When Dr. Emma Sweeney stumbles across the victim of a hit-and-run outside Galway University early one morning, she calls her boyfriend, Detective Cormac Reilly, bringing him first to the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID that will put this crime at the center of a scandal—her card identifies her as Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland's most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie....

Mercy and Lizzie McCarthy are settling in to the charming seaside village of Shamrock Cove on the west coast of Ireland. Lizzie throws herself into organizing a book festival and mystery writer Mercy even agrees to come out of her bookish hidey-hole to do get involved. But then the star author for the event is found dead. James Brandt was killed by a falling bookshelf in his own cottage… The local detective is not convinced by Mercy’s suspicion of murder but when someone else turns up dead, the police cannot ignore it.

It's official! Siobhan is now Garda O'Sullivan, and her five siblings couldn't be prouder. While her brother James runs Naomi's Bistro, Siobhan is doing her part to keep the village safe. Of course, Kilbane is pretty quiet compared to a place like Dublin, where Macdara Flannery has gone to be a detective sergeant. Then one night the local priest summons Siobhan to the church cemetery. There's a dead man in the graveyard - above ground. He's a stranger, but the priest has heard talk of an American tourist in town searching for an Irish ancestor.

In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

“An absolutely mesmerizing read. . . . Tana French is simply this: a truly great writer.” —Gillian Flynn Read the New York Times bestseller by Tana French, author of the The Hunter and “the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years” (The Washington Post). A year ago...

Discover how Meghan Truman, Sandy Bay's latest resident and new bakery owner, navigates her way through three murder mysteries as she gets to know the quirky characters in her adopted hometown after failing to make a career as an actress in Hollywood. The town's local detective, Jack Irvin, has an eye for Meghan, but will she find time to build a romance while she tries to clear her name?

It’s the year 2000, and while Bunny McGarry is theoretically on sabbatical from the police, he just can’t help sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. Rosie Flint is an old acquaintance of Bunny’s whose boyfriend mysteriously disappears off the face of the Earth. What starts out as a simple missing person’s case soon gets a whole lot more complicated when it emerges that the boyfriend is not who he claimed to be, and there are some rather sinister people showing an unhealthy interest in Rosie.

The competition for best whiskey in Ireland will be a publicity bonanza for the winner, and that means there are celebrities involved-like boxer Angus McConal and Megan's friend Niamh, an up-and-coming actress who's teamed up with Megan's uncle, the retired Sligo harbormaster. But rivalries and revelries turn out to be a bad blend when McConal dies at a whiskey tasting. Megan promised her girlfriend she'd quit her amateur sleuthing, but with Niamh and her uncle as suspects, she's over a barrel.

1916: Betty O’Fogarty is proud and clever. Spurred on by Betty's belief in her husband Seamus’s talent as a violin-maker and her desire to escape rural life, the couple elopes to Dublin. As Dublin is plunged into chaos as the Easter Rebellion of 1916, Betty gives birth to her first child to the sound of gunfire and shelling. A hundred years later, secrets churn their way to the surface, and Betty’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren uncover both Betty’s ruthlessness and her unique brand of heroism.

A New York Times bestseller and a Best Book of 2018 by NPR, The New York Times Book Review, Amazon, The Boston Globe, LitHub, Vulture, Slate, Elle, Vox, and Electric Literature “Tana French’s best and most intricately nuanced novel yet.” —The New York Times An “extraordinary”...

One year ago, Lucy’s sister, Nicki, left to meet friends at a pub in Dublin and never came home. The third Irish woman to vanish inexplicably in as many years, the agony of not knowing what happened that night has turned Lucy’s life into a waking nightmare. So, she’s going to take matters into her own hands. Angela works as a paper-pusher in the Missing Persons Unit, but wants nothing more than to be a fully fledged member of An Garda Síochána, the Irish police force. With the investigation into the missing women stalled, she begins pulling on a thread that could break the case wide open.