Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book Of The Year 2020

The winner of the Irish Independent Crime Fiction Book Of The Year 2020 has been announced.

  • After the Silence by Louise O’Neill

Irish Independent’s Nicola Anderson spoke to the winner:

… And though we may have been reading alone – with libraries shuttered and book clubs forced to retreat to Zoom – we continued to read together, with a record 143,000 votes cast for the An Post Irish Book Awards by the book-loving public to select the winners in each category….

For author Louise O’Neill, her win in the Irish Independent Crime Fiction of the Year category with her latest book, After the Silence, rendered her “speechless”.

She was just about to walk her new rescue puppy, Cooper, when she got the call. “The category is always incredibly strong because the standard of crime fiction is so high in Ireland. I was nervous.”

Inspired by the West Cork podcast on the notorious murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in West Cork 25 years ago, O’Neill said there is a reason it is still referred to locally as ‘The Murder’. “People have never forgotten it,” she said.