Orchid Blue

January 1961, and the beaten, stabbed and strangled body of a nineteen year old Pearl Gambol is discovered, after a dance the previous night at the Newry Orange Hall. Returning from London to investigate the case, Detective Eddie McCrink soon suspects that their may be people wielding influence over affairs, and that the accused, the enigmatic Robert McGladdery, may struggle to get a fair hearing. Presiding over the case is Lord Justice Curran, a man who nine years previously had found his own family in the news, following the murder of his nineteen year old daughter, Patricia. In a spectacular return to the territory of his acclaimed, Booker longlisted The Blue Tango, Eoin McNamee's new novel explores and dissects this notorious murder case which led to the final hanging on Northern Irish soil.

Eoin McNamee's novels include Resurrection Man, later made into a film, The Blue Tango, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, Orchid Blue, described by John Burnside in the Guardian as 'not only a political novel of the highest order but also that rare phenomenon, a genuinely tragic work of art,' and Blue is the Night which was awarded the 2015 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award. He lives in Sligo.