With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they'd be cooking chips at this hour was anyone's guess.

Adrian McKinty

Categorized in : Numbers House Fire

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.

Adrian McKinty

patterns dna animal

The minutes ticked past. This is why peelers need a book. A wee paperback to stick in your pocket.

Adrian McKinty

pockets book past

Drawing Dead is a brilliant noir from one of Australia's most exciting new novelists.

Adrian McKinty

drawing novelists australia

I find it easier to write in the winter in Melbourne. When the weather is good you want to go out for a walk, ride a bike, go to a cafe or something. When it's raining, when it's a miserable day, I just sit down at my desk and get some work done.

Adrian McKinty

day good work winter

Our daughter's name Arwynn comes from Arwen in 'Lord of the Rings' because my wife and I met for the first time in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford where J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis used to go to read out their stories to one another.

Adrian McKinty

child wife daughter time

Irish fathers still have certain responsibilities, and by the time my two daughters turned seven, they could swim, ride a bike, sing at least one part of a Woody Guthrie song, and recite all of W. B. Yeats's 'The Song of Wandering Aengus.'

Adrian McKinty

ride bike time song

The winters in Denver are brutal; it snows from the end of October to April.

Adrian McKinty

end brutal april october

I was knocked down and dragged by a police Land Rover in a hit-and-run.

Adrian McKinty

knocked down police land

On my Wikipedia page, it used to say I was born in Belfast, Ireland, then it said Belfast, Northern Ireland, and then it said Belfast, U.K. So there was a little war going on about where Belfast is located.

Adrian McKinty

i-was-born say born war

I did the same thing as every Irish person who comes to New York. I arrived on a Wednesday, and by Saturday night, I was pulling pints at a pub in the Bronx.

Adrian McKinty

person new saturday night

Every publisher or agent I've ever met told me the same thing - that Irish readers don't want to read about the bad old days of the Troubles; neither do the English and Americans - they only want to read about the Ireland of The Quiet Man, when red-haired widows are riding bicycles and everyone else is on a horse.

Adrian McKinty

me man riding horse

I had gone to New York with no plan at all. I did a lot of jobs - barman, teacher, security guard, postman and construction worker - and I was meeting many eccentric characters, and they were saying funny things, which I always wrote down.

Adrian McKinty

down construction teacher funny

We were living in Denver, Colorado, and I was teaching high school. I asked the kids to write a short story, so I thought I should write some myself.

Adrian McKinty

short myself high-school school

I did a law degree but was miserable the whole time. I was supposed to join a law firm in London but instead went to Oxford to do a master's in philosophy.

Adrian McKinty

london law time philosophy

I don't know if that's a year's bad luck, or if that's how it works. But stealing a Christmas tree - that can't be a good thing, karma-wise.

Adrian McKinty

good christmas luck tree

I met my wife in Oxford, fell in love with her, and followed her to New York. I was an illegal there for the first few years, until we got married, so I ended up doing lots of interesting jobs, some for a few days, some for a few months.

Adrian McKinty

new doing wife love

I speak with a Northern Irish accent with a tinge of New York. My wife has a bit of a Boston accent; my oldest daughter talks with a Denver accent, and my youngest has a true blue Aussie accent. It's complicated.

Adrian McKinty

wife daughter speak blue

I was born the year the Troubles began, in 1968. That world of violence was all I knew - people murdered, maimed, kneecapped, bombed. I don't remember a time without a major atrocity of some kind every week.

Adrian McKinty

time remember people world

I used to get a lift to school every day with a man who was a major in the British Army.

Adrian McKinty

day man army school

The Ned Kelly is definitely the coolest of all the crime fiction awards, and if you think about it, it's the only one that's given for an entire continent.

Adrian McKinty

think you crime awards