Irish Author reigns in Australia

Paula Xiberras

This year I had the pleasure of talking to author Adrian McKinty about his book ‘Rain Dogs’ and his career as a crime writer.

Adrian, who resides in Melbourne, loves Hobart which he describes as ‘absolutely gorgeous’ and its waterside ‘reminiscent of a Scottish port’. It is not unknown for Adrian to take a flight to Tassie to escape Melbourne’s heatwave.

I ask Adrian what drew him to becoming a crime writer and he tells me perhaps the catalyst was the reading material in his ‘rather old school’ in Ireland that was ‘bloody boring’ concentrating on very serious fiction such as Tom Hardy, Thackeray and Trollope. Adrian says there were only so many descriptions of ‘Hardy heaths in autumn’ that he could stand! Adrian went searching for more interesting reading material and it was at the library he was seduced by crime writing in the form of a Raymond Chandler novel with its exciting storyline, not to mention its racy cover of a woman in a sexy dress and a detective in a fedora.

Adrian’s latest novel ‘Rain Dogs’ is ‘a locked room murder mystery’ about a young woman who falls from the top of the 8000 year old Carrickfergus castle.

‘Rain dog’ is a term coined by Tom Waits on his album of the same name.
A rain dog is literally one caught in the rain which has washed away the dogs trail home.

Carrickfergus is the home of his detective Duffy but is also the part of Ireland where Adrian himself lived. Adrian says he chose the castle as his setting for this novel as Duffy had lived nearby for seven years and the castle had never been utilised in a storyline.

Adrian explains that having grown in a time when fiction was the reserve of the upper classes he likes to populate his books with working class characters.

Even though Adrian has carved a place in crime fiction he is not averse to trying other genres, and as a confessed fan of Highlander wouldn’t mind trying romantic fiction.

Rain dogs is out now published by Allen and Unwin.