Brian McGilloway talks to Tom Fletcher

Crime novelist Brian McGilloway talks about his writing career and his upcoming novel, The One You Least Suspect.

In his new novel, barmaid Katie often hears things she shouldn’t working in the pub owned by the notorious O’Reilly brothers. When approached by two detectives looking for information, she faces an impossible dilemma. The only way to keep her family safe is to become an informant but that is a dangerous game with men like the O’Reillys.

McGilloway is the New York Times bestselling author of 13 crime novels, including the Ben Devlin and the Lucy Black mystery series. His last novel, The Empty Room, was a Sunday Times bestseller while his previous, The Last Crossing, was highly commended in the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2021. Here he talks to Tom Fletcher, former principal of Hertford College, Oxford, a former foreign policy and Northern Ireland adviser to Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, and David Cameron, and former ambassador to the Lebanon. He has written two crime fiction novels,  The Ambassador Canelo and The Assassin and is currently United Nations under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator.

Part of the festival’s crime fiction programme.