Adrian McKinty is one of the best novelists working today. 

Though winning awards and getting great reviews, he couldn’t make a living as an author. Award winning books were selling 2-3 thousand copies a year.

After getting evicted, Adrian started driving Uber to try to pay overdue bills.

Author Don Winslow heard about it — and asked his agent to contact McKinty to see if there was anything they could do to keep him writing. Shane Salerno offered him $10,000 to keep trying.

At around three in the morning, McKinty gave it a go, writing the first 30 pages of what would become The Chain, sent it to the agent — and went to bed. His phone rang again at 4.15am. 

“Forget bartending. Forget driving a bloody Uber,” Salerno said. “You’re writing this book.”

The Chain (2019) became a huge hit.

The Detective Up Late (2023) is 7th in his series of his Sean Duffy novels.

Slamming the door on the hellscape of 1980s Belfast, Detective Inspector Sean Duffy hopes that the 1990s are going to be better for him and the people of Northern Ireland.

As a Catholic cop in the mainly Protestant RUC he still has a target on his back, and with a steady girlfriend and a child the stakes couldn’t be higher. 

After handling a mercurial triple agent and surviving the riots and bombings and assassination attempts, all Duffy wants to do now is live.

But in his final days in charge of Carrickfergus CID, a missing persons report captures his attention.

A fifteen-year-old traveler girl has disappeared and no one seems to give a damn about it.

Duffy begins to dig and uncovers a disturbing underground of men who seem to know her very well.

The deeper he digs the more sinister it all gets. Is finding out the truth worth it if DI Duffy is going to get himself and his colleagues killed?

Can he survive one last case before getting himself and his family out over the water? 

Blackstone

I’d highly recommend the audio version as it’s done by Gerard Doyle, one of my favourite readers.