LOUISE PHILLIPS
Critically acclaimed and internationally recognised as a member of an elite band of crime writers who know how to create dark, suspenseful plots, Dubliner Louise Phillips has written four pyschological thrillers. Her debut, Red Ribbons, has just been published in the United States.
She grew up in Mount Pleasant buildings in Ranelagh, leaving school after her Intermediate Cert to work in an architect’s office. She has three adult children and began writing 10 years ago – when her youngest son was 14 – after taking a class in creative writing. She was an immediate success.
All of her novels were nominated for Irish Crime Novel of the Year in the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book awards, an honour she won in 2013 for The Doll’s House.
Her latest novel, The Game Changer, is out on March 24 I’ve worked with senior crime officers, detectives, rank and file, hostage negotiators, undercover police officers and pretty much every level of the Irish police force. In many ways, this has influenced the things that I write about.
Over the years, one Dublin detective has stood out. Let’s call him, Gary. With over 30 years in the force, Gary has seen plenty of murder and mayhem. He refuses to watch Love/Hate as it’s too close to the day job – one January, Gary had three murder investigations to deal with before the month was out. He thinks my fictional detective, Adam O’Connor, is based on him, and there’s some truth in that.
Both of them are no nonsense kind of guys, with a strong moral code and policing in their DNA.
Gary has worked with Interpol and Europol, and has travelled the world doing what he does best, detection. I’ve rarely asked him a question that he doesn’t know the answer to, but even when that does happen, Gary gets the answer. That’s how Gary operates.
The reason he knows so much is because he has done and seen it all, including cracking paedophile rings, high profile murders and missing person cases. Most people, will never meet Gary, but he exists, and because of him, we’re all a lot safer.