Skip to main content

Adrian McKinty

Biography

Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty was born and grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during the Troubles. His father was a welder in Harland and Wolff --- the shipyard where they built the Titanic; his mother was a school lunch lady and secretary. Adrian went to Oxford University on a full scholarship where he studied philosophy. 

Emigrating first to America and then Australia he found work as a door-to-door salesman, a driver, a bookstore clerk, a barman, a high school English teacher and a semipro rugby player. 

His debut crime novel, DEAD I WELL MAY BE, was shortlisted for the 2004 Dagger Award and was optioned by Universal Pictures. He is the author of more than a dozen crime novels that have been translated into over 40 languages. He has won the Edgar Award, the Anthony Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Barry Award, the Macavity Award, the International Thriller Writers Award, and is a three-time winner of the Ned Kelly Award.  

His 2020 novel, THE CHAIN, was a New York Times bestseller and appeared on 25 best-of-the-year lists. His 2022 novel, THE ISLAND, was an instant New York Times bestseller and made five best-of-the-year lists, including those of the London Times and the New York Times

Adrian is a member of the Linnean Society and the National Audubon Society. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.

Adrian McKinty

Books by Adrian McKinty

by Adrian McKinty - Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

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. 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 15-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.

by Adrian McKinty - Fiction, Suspense, Thriller

After moving from a small country town to Seattle, Heather Baxter marries Tom, a widowed doctor with a young son and teenage daughter. A working vacation overseas seems like the perfect way to bring the new family together, but once they’re deep in the Australian outback, the jet-lagged and exhausted kids are so over their new mom. When they discover remote Dutch Island, off-limits to outside visitors, the family talks their way onto the ferry, taking a chance on an adventure far from the reach of iPhones and Instagram. But as soon as they set foot on the island, which is run by a tightly knit clan of locals, everything feels wrong. Then a shocking accident propels the Baxters from an unsettling situation into an absolute nightmare.

by Adrian McKinty - Fiction, Psychological Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Thriller

Rachel Klein drops her daughter at the bus stop and heads into her day. But a cell phone call from an unknown number changes everything. It's a woman on the line, informing her that she has Kylie bound and gagged in her back seat, and the only way Rachel will see her again is to follow her instructions exactly: pay a ransom and find another child to abduct. This is no ordinary kidnapping: the caller is a mother herself, whose son has been taken, and if Rachel doesn't do as she's told, the boy will die. Rachel is now part of The Chain, an unending and ingenious scheme that turns victims into criminals --- and is making someone else very rich in the process.