Sam Blake is a bestselling crime author with a string of novels to her name. From Hertfordshire, she now lives in the Wicklow Mountains …
Sam Blake founded the writing resources website writing.ie, along with The Inkwell Group publishing consultancy and Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival. She is Chair of the Board of the Society of Authors. Her latest book, The Killing Sense, is out now.
“As a writer I’m always looking for ideas and so I am really enjoying Patrick McGilligan’s Alfred Hitchcock, A Life in Darkness and Light. A weighty tome, it’s packed full of detail on Hitchcock’s thinking and approach – fascinating.
“Social media has impacted my concentration span. Add to that a menopausal brain that wakes in the middle of the night, and my bedside reading needs to really grab me and get me through the early hours.”
I’ve been absolutely hooked by Catherine Kirwan’s latest thriller The Seventh Body (out in March). I’ve just finished it, and am feeling bereft. Detective Garda Alice McCann is a new character for Catherine, whose Cork-based solicitor Finn Fitzpatrick has already made her mark. I adore Catherine’s writing for its quality and her love of Cork, and because I always learn something new through her books. Pacy, twisty and addictive, this one blew me away. A girl’s body is found hidden beneath a pub floor as the building is redeveloped – who she is, and how she got there, are gradually revealed via plotting master strokes that will keep you up!
Mary Watson’s adult debut The Cleaner is another clever premise, where the locations feel like characters themselves. An intense, dark story (also with a huge twist), this is about a cleaner who goes to work in a secluded enclave of houses. The story opens with Esmie manufacturing a bike accident so that she can meet two of the householders and land herself a job – we know from the beginning that she has an agenda, but we only discover how it involves a previous tenant as the story unfolds. This is a multicultural story of relationships, secrets and manipulation, and it is beautifully written.”
The Killing Sense (Corvus, €16.99), is out now.
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