Adrian McKinty

Belfast born, Oxford educated, the New York Times best-selling author Adrian McKinty has amassed an impressive list of literary awards including the Edgar, the Anthony, and the Macavity. Despite critical achievement, in 2017, the lack of financial success, which created hardship on his family, caused him to announce his decision to cease writing. Fortunately, the publication in his blog of his intent was noticed by author Don Winslow who stepped in by introducing his agent to McKinty’s work. In 2019, McKinty’s standalone thriller, The Chain, became a global sensation thereby cementing his future. His latest release, Hang on St. Christopher, is the eighth book in his popular Sean Duffy series, featuring a Catholic cop in Northern Ireland and set during the turbulent times in Ireland known as The Troubles. Growing up in Belfast during that era, when it was common to regularly check under cars for bombs before travel, McKinty draws on his own experiences to craft the popular series. He currently resides in New York City with his wife and two daughters.

Q: For the benefit of a new reader, tell us a little bit about Sean Duffy, your protagonist in Hang on St. Christopher.

Adrian: This is the eighth book in the series. I always try and write the books as if they’re all standalones. I think that’s really important.

It’s basically set in Northern Ireland in the 1990s. I’m from Northern Ireland. It’s about a policeman who was there kind of at the end of this big, long civil war they had between the Protestants and the Catholics known as the Troubles. He’s an ordinary cop. In the previous book, book seven, he went into semi-retirement. Now he’s happily ensconced over the water in Scotland. He’s got a wife and child, and everything is great. Then another murder case falls into his lap. And the question is, does he take it? Or does he stay in Scotland, play golf, and have an easy life? I have to be perfectly honest. If he had stayed in Scotland and played golf, it would not have been very interesting. So, spoiler alert, he decides to take the case.

Q: Is Sean based on a real person?

Adrian: Yes, I knew a lot of policemen growing up. I knew about four or five different cops, and he’s a little bit of all of them—and a little bit of me.

Q: Why did you make Sean Duffy a Catholic living and working in a Protestant area during the volatile times?

Adrian: So, there’s going to be that conflict. I’m going to have most of his neighbors be working class. He’s more sort of middle class. They’re all Protestants. He’s a Catholic. So, I thought, “Okay, Adrian, if you can’t do something with this, you know you’re not trying hard enough because you’ve got all those different elements coming together.” That makes it a lot more fun if there’s conflict right from the start.

Q:  Aside from Sean, who is your next favorite character in the book?

Adrian: When you’re writing a police novel, it’s really fun for a novelist to have someone to play off the protagonist. There’s this guy who works with Sean, called Detective Sergeant McCrabban. I wanted him to be everything that Sean is not. Sean is flamboyant, reckless, and doesn’t mind danger. He’s Catholic and really into music, poetry, drinking, and going to the pub. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if you have this solid Presbyterian, farmer type, a guy who is super solid and just as smart in his own way, absolutely just as smart. But someone for Sean to play off—sort of the Holmes and Watson idea. I love that dynamic.

Q: Does the series require research?

Adrian: Always every book. I have to research the cases. I have to research the milieu, the sort of the time period, and then I have to sort of research what was happening with the police force in that period. So yeah, but I have to say, I really enjoy that part of the process. Researching the book is almost more fun for me than actually writing it, because I love going to the library, looking at the old newspapers, and listening to the old music. Now, we have YouTube. You can watch all the old TV shows.

Q:  You lived in Belfast in the time period of the book. Are any of Sean’s dangerous experiences based upon yours?

Adrian: Yes, I would say the early seventies was a really bad period. There was a lull in the mid-seventies, and then everything really kicked off in the eighties. There were times in the eighties where there would be a bombing, or a shooting, or a riot every day—like every night. I was obviously a little boy, but every night you would go to bed, and you would hear a bombing, or shooting, or a riot, or something. Every day there was something going on for ten years. It was crazy. Now, I should stress, please visit Belfast. It’s a beautiful city now. But back in the eighties, it was the Apocalypse. When I came to write the series of books, it was pretty easy to always have something going on like some sort of a murder, or a bombing, or something happening every day.

Q: Is it reasonable to assume that books in the series are based on real cases?

Adrian: Oh, yeah. Every single one is based on a real case. I’m not that creative or imaginative. I always base it on some element of truth. It gives you as a writer a guide, gives you a framework to work within, and then you can play within that box. I like having the guardrails.

Q: When you base a book on an actual event or case, do you use the same ending?

Adrian: No, no! I use it as the inciting incident and the inciting idea. And then I allow myself the freedom to go where I had to go for the purposes of the book and for the characters. You’ve got to give yourself that freedom to go where the story is going to take you.

Q:  When starting a book, do you know how the book will end?

Adrian: Most of the time I know. I have a fairly rigorous plan. I like to have a three-or-four-page plan. Other writers, like Lee Child, have no plan or clue whatsoever. I’ve talked to him. He says he just gets up every day and has no clue what’s going to happen. It surprises him when he sits down at the keyboard. I like a little bit of freedom. But I also like to know where we’re heading.

Q: Are any scenes particularly fun or difficult to write?

Adrian: I really enjoy all of them. I guess I have the most fun doing the humor. I know that when police officers are together there’s a lot of camaraderie, a lot of esprit de corps, and a lot of jokes.

Q: Having studied law, politics, and philosophy, why did you decide to become a writer?

Adrian: I think it was because I knew I was going to be a terrible lawyer. I had done a couple of summers interning in solicitors’ firms and thought this really seems like a lot of hard work, and I don’t know if I have the constitution for this amount of hours per week. I thought, I’ve got to find another way of making a living. That’s when I started doing little short stories, book reviews, and essays. And I thought, this is more my kind of pace. I can do my own hours. I can work at night. This just seems better.

Q: You’ve written standalones, and three series. Which do you prefer to write?

Adrian: You know, it’s an excellent question. I think maybe standalones, because with a standalone, you just have complete freedom. With a series, you’re probably not gonna kill your protagonist or one of the major friends of the protagonist. Whereas with a standalone, there’s no rules. You could just do anything. The reason I like a series is that you can develop characters over time, have them change, grow, and get older, and they can have little in-jokes and stuff like that. That’s a different type of pleasure.

Q: Do you write strictly for reader entertainment? Or do you hope that people will learn something?

Adrian: A little bit of both, I never want to lecture people, bore people, or say this is what you have to believe. I never want to do that. If you want that, go read a history book or watch a documentary. I want people to have fun with the novel and the story. But if you learn some stuff or are interested in stuff and want to Google it afterwards, that’s great. So, I’m more kind of like, let’s all just enjoy each other’s company for the next three hundred pages.

Q: What is the most rewarding aspect of being an author?

Adrian: I love the book readings. I love meeting the fans. I’m extremely extroverted at a book reading. If you were to see me in the street, I’m quite introverted. I’m a bookish kind of guy. I like to read. I like to listen to music. But when I’m on stage for a book reading, I love them. And I would probably do that for free. That is by far my favorite aspect of the whole business. I have so much fun with it. I love the whole process. They’re supposed to last an hour, and they never do. They always have to come up to me and say, “Adrian, we’re closing this door now.” They have to kick me out.

Q: in your leisure time. Who do you read?

Adrian: Oh, my God! Here’s the thing! I kind of cheat a lot because I was a book reviewer for the last twenty years. I’m easing off on that. But all the publishers know me, and so I get sent ten books a week for reviews and for blurbs. I read everything. I read history and science, crime fiction and science fiction. I literally read everything because I also have a bit of an insomnia issue. From about eleven to about three every night, I’m reading. I can actually show you what I’m reading tonight.

Q: With Sean now semi-retired and counting down to full retirement, is an end to the series nearing?

Adrian: I don’t know. I’ll tell you I love aging him in real time. I think that’s really fun to have him get older. It might be fun to see what he does after the police. Who knows? I mean, does he stay and play golf in Scotland? It’s going to be very, very dull for the readers, so, hopefully something will happen to him. But at this stage, I have no clue what that something will be.

Q: What is in the future for Adrian McKinty?

Adrian:  I’m going to get through the book tours coming up and then do what I kind of do every year after the book tour. I’ll take a month off to think about whether the next one is going to be a series book or a standalone. Then, I’ll kind of plot it through. I’ll probably start writing a new book in the summer. I’ll either start the actual writing itself, or I’ll do the research. I will start in the late spring or early summer on something new. What that is? I’m not lying. I have no clue. Hopefully by summer, I will have a big clue what it is. Otherwise, I’m in big trouble. Because then I’ll start getting phone calls from my editor and agent saying, “Adrian. What have you started?”

When Hang on St. Christopher begins, Sean Duffy is a semi-retired Detective Inspector with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, living in Scotland with only six days each month spent in Ireland performing mundane work. He is counting down to full retirement with a peaceful life with his family and on the golf course when his superior rings wanting to assign him a new murder case. Although initially reluctant, the seasoned detective is drawn into action by his natural affinity for crime-solving plus the promise of financial reward. However, he agrees to take the case on condition his trusted partner, Sergeant Detective McCrabban, works with him. While the brutal murder of the victim, an artist, is initially believed to have been the result of a random carjacking, Sean sees other possibilities. Relying on experience and instinct, he eschews the conventional wisdom and puts himself in serious danger as he seeks the perpetrator, the true reason for the murder, and who was behind it. With skill, wit, and commitment, Sean takes reckless actions to accomplish his goal. Readers will bond with the dedicated team of  Duffy and McCrabban as they display touches of humor along with determination and heroics in this fast-paced thriller set in the violent times in recent Irish history. And who wouldn’t love a cop who responds to a threat from a ruffian with, “Ask around, son. I’m f—ing unkillable.”