Scribner: US and Canada

Unieboek: Netherlands & Belgium

Sphere/Little, Brown/Hachette  Ireland, UK,  rest of the world

Struggling to find his feet back in Ireland after a lengthy posting with Europol in Madrid, drugs specialist DI Mike Mulcahy finds himself in unfamiliar territory when he’s pulled in on the investigation into a horrific sex attack on a Spanish student. Mulcahy becomes convinced there is a more to it than a random sexual assault but his know-it-all colleagues and politically motivated bosses, eager for a quick, uncontroversial result, ignore his growing belief that the attack had religious rather than sexual motivations. Overruled, Mulcahy sets out on his own parallel investigation but he is frustrated at every turn until reporter Siobhan Fallon turns up asking awkward questions. As more young women are attacked, and assault turns to murder, Mulcahy and Fallon are drawn ever deeper into an uneasy alliance, each step they take hurtling them closer to a blood-drenched showdown with the monstrous killer known as “the Priest”

THE PRIEST is the first in a series of gripping Dublin-based crime thrillers featuring Irish cop DI Mike Mulcahy, and Siobhan Fallon, chief reporter for an Irish tabloid newspaper.

Praise for THE PRIEST…

‘Fast-paced, exciting and thrilling, this is an impressive debut’

– The Sunday Times

‘It is difficult to believe that 'The Priest' is O’Donovan’s first novel, so gripping and assured is it. And, one asks, in crime-writing terms, is Ireland becoming the new Scotland?’

–  The Times

‘In Mike Mulcahy, O’Donovan has created a well drawn, multifaceted cop whom readers are likely to want to spend more time with in the future… An impressive debut, with a well paced plot and enough twists to keep the reader interested until the last page.’

– The Sunday Business Post

‘A sure command of plot and pacing, a lively sense of locale and a quirky sense of character … compelling.’

– Irish Independent

‘Gerard O’Donovan is a pleasing new Irish voice, and his DI, Mike Mulcahy, may do for Dublin what Ian Rankin’s hard-boiled cop, Rebus, did for Edinburgh. Well-paced and full of the set pieces crime fans adore, O’Donovan’s first Mulcahy novel is a classy exploration of the melancholy cop story.’

– The Australian

‘A fine debut... This is a book you want to read right now, so you can later lay claim to bragging rights of having been one of O’Donovan’s earliest fans.’                    

– Bookpage

& still to come... 

The Priest will be published in translation by Goldmann Verlag in Germany and Newton Compton in Italy