Carrickfergus and author Adrian McKinty

I used to work in Carrickfergus Library and one of the local celebrity authors was Adrian McKinty – well, he grew up there and his family still live there but he has lived across the water for a long time. He lives in the States now with his American wife and family but they did live in Australia for a few years and he has drawn on this experience for his latest thriller ‘The Island’.

I am a big fan of his ‘Duffy’ crime novels which are based in Carrickfergus during the 1980’s. Sean Duffy is a catholic Detective Sergeant based in the local RUC station in the predominantly protestant area, creating interesting tensions in that Co Antrim community during investigations.

Adrian came to Carrick Library a few years ago with his fellow crime author Steve Cavanagh and together they entertained a large audience of local crime fans. Adrian specially had a great tale to tell as his writing career had almost folded the previous year- he had resorted to becoming an Uber driver to boost the family funds despite being , in his own words, ‘a terrible driver’. He was picked up by a new agent – Shane Salerno- and had the great idea of a standalone thriller ‘The Chain’. At the time of the visit he couldn’t tell us much about the novel but it was obvious that this one would put his name back up in the ranks and so it did! The movie rights have been optioned for it and the novel became a best seller. ‘The Island’ is his next standalone thriller along the same lines of ‘The Chain’, tense, fast moving and terrifying in equal parts – not quite as polished as ‘The Chain’ but never the less, an edge-of-your-seat thriller set in Australia.

There are still a lot of us Duffy fans out there though and we are still waiting for the last two Duffy offerings from Adrian – long promised.  He’d better come back to Carrickfergus Library when he does finally publish them. We need to have a proper celebration on Duffy’s home turf!

@adrianmckinty  @SteveCavanagh_

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