Award-winning and best-selling Dervla McTiernan is a well-known name in crime fiction. Her works have received worldwide recognition. She has sold over 400,000 copies in Australia and New Zealand alone.
Coming from a household of seven children, Devla grew up in Carrigaline and Douglas before moving to Dublin and later Limerick due to her father’s banking job.
McTiernan studied corporate law at the University College Galway. After that, she became a solicitor in Dublin. She returned to Galway to establish her practice, where she worked for around twelve years. When Ireland went into recession, she and her husband, Kenny, relocated to Australia.
She decided to take up writing seriously in 2014. Her debut novel was released in 2018.
Dervla lives in Perth, Australia, with her husband and two children. She is a member of the Sisters in Crime and the Crime Writers Association.
Dervla McTiernan Books in order
A Cormac Reilly Mystery
Standalone Novel
Similar authors
- J.G. Hetherton’s Laura Chambers Mystery series follows Investigative journalist Laura Chambers. Back in her hometown, she takes a job in the local newspaper, when children start disappearing.
- P.J. Vernon’s When You Find Me novel that features socialite Gray Godfrey. When her husband is missing, Gray may learn some hard truths about her family.
See also: Lisa Unger Books in Order.
Most recommended books
- The Good Turn (Cormac Reilly, #3) (4.23 Goodreads score)
- The Scholar (Cormac Reilly, #2) (4.03 Goodreads score)
- The Ruin (Cormac Reilly, #1) (3.96 Goodreads score)
- The Murder Rule (3.88 Goodreads score)
- The Roommate (Cormac Reilly, #0.7) (3.68 Goodreads score)
Awards
- Her first novel, The Ruin, won a number of awards and nominations, including the 2019 Davitt Award for best novel, the Barry Award for Best Paperback Book, and the 2019 Ned Kelly Award for Best First Novel. The book was short-listed for The Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize.
- The Scholar won the Best Paperback Original Novel in the 2020 International Thriller Writers Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2020 Davitt Award for Best adult crime novel. It was also shortlisted for the 2020 Ned Kelly Award for best crime fiction.
Upcoming books
McTiernan returns in 2022 with her first standalone thriller, The Murder Rule. McTiernan has crafted a twisting thriller inspired by the true story of a young law student. He worked at the Innocence Project and unearthed evidence that exonerated a man who had been in prison for 26 years.
Movies based on the books
Dervla McTiernan’s first novel, The Ruin, is being adapted for film by Irish actor Colin Farrell and his production company.
Book summaries
The Ruin (2018)
It’s been twenty years since Detective Cormac Reilly discovered the body of Hilaria Blake in her crumbling home. But he’s never forgotten the two children she left behind…When Aisling Conroy’s boyfriend Jack is found in the freezing black waters of the river Corrib in Ireland, the police tell her it was suicide. She throws herself into work, trying to forget—but Jack’s sister Maude reappears in Ireland after years abroad, determined to prove Jack was murdered.Meanwhile, Detective Cormac Reilly, who was recently transferred to Galway from his squad in Dublin, is assigned to dig into a cold case from twenty years ago—the seeming overdose of Jack and Maude’s drug and alcohol addled mother. Other detectives are connecting Jack’s death to his mother’s, and pushing Reilly to arrest Maude, and fast. But instinct tells him something isn’t quite what it seems…This unsettling small-town noir draws us deep into the dark heart of Ireland, where corruption, desperation, and crime run rife. A gritty look at trust and betrayal where the written law isn’t the only one, The Ruin asks who will protect you when the authorities can’t—or won’t.
The Scholar (2019)
When Dr. Emma Sweeney stumbles across the victim of a hit-and-run outside Galway University early one morning, she calls her boyfriend, Detective Cormac Reilly, bringing him first to the scene of a murder that would otherwise never have been assigned to him. The dead girl is carrying an ID that will put this crime at the center of a scandal–her card identifies her as Carline Darcy, heir apparent to Darcy Therapeutics, Ireland’s most successful pharmaceutical company. Darcy Therapeutics has a finger in every pie, from sponsoring university research facilities to funding political parties to philanthropy–it has even funded Emma’s own ground-breaking research.As the murder investigation twists in unexpected ways and Cormac’s running of the case comes under scrutiny from the department and his colleagues, he is forced to question himself and the beliefs that he has long held as truths. Who really is Emma? And who is Carline Darcy?
The Good Turn (2020)
Some lines should never be crossed.Police corruption, an investigation that ends in tragedy, and the mystery of a little girl’s silence—three unconnected events that will prove to be linked by one small town.While Detective Cormac Reilly faces enemies at work and trouble in his personal life, Garda Peter Fisher is relocated out of Galway with the threat of prosecution hanging over his head. But even that is not as terrible as having to work for his overbearing father, the local copper for the pretty seaside town of Roundstone.For some, like Anna and her young daughter, Tilly, Roundstone is a refuge from trauma. But even this village on the edge of the sea isn’t far enough to escape from the shadows of evil men.
The Murder Rule (2022)
First Rule: Make them like you.Second Rule: Make them need you.Third Rule: Make them pay.They think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system.They think I’m working hard to impress them.They think I’m here to save an innocent man on death row. They’re wrong. I’m going to bury him.
