Brian McGilloway

Brian McGilloway is the author of the internationally acclaimed Inspector Devlin series.

From his Q & A with Jordan Foster at Publishers Weekly:

Inspector Devlin doesn't fit the "cop" stereotype, especially the hard-drinking Irishman.

When I started the first Devlin novel, my wife was expecting our first child. As a result, most of my preoccupation was with trying to be a good husband and father. It made sense that this should be something I'd explore in my protagonist. While I understood the precedent for the hard-drinking divorced maverick in crime novels, I felt that I had nothing new to bring to that type of character. It seemed more interesting to have a detective who is, for the most part, a normal balanced individual struggling to reconcile his various roles as father, husband, policeman.

Who are your literary influences?

In terms of crime fiction, James Lee Burke, Ian Rankin, and John Connolly. Burke is simply a superb writer, and Rankin is unmatched in the modern procedural field. Connolly is an inspiration for a whole generation of Irish crime writers, myself included, simply because he showed it was possible for an Irish writer not only to write crime fiction that might appeal beyond Ireland but also to write it so well. I'm not convinced we'd be having the crime fiction wave we're having in Ireland had it not been for John's trailblazing.

How does living near the Ireland/Northern Ireland border affect Devlin's ability to do his job?

The border ...[read on]

Read about Brian McGilloway's top ten modern Irish crime novels.

--Marshal Zeringue