There are countless examples of Irish Crime Fiction troughout the 20th Century. Admittedly, in some cases the links between  a given  Crime  author and Ireland might be missed, or are by now forgotten. The prolific George A. Birmingham, for example  (James Owen Hannay, 1865 – 1950) was a Belfast born Church of Ireland clergyman. Some Irish authors rank amongst the most celebrated representatives of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, like the Dublin born Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957). Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day-Lewis, 1904-1972) is another famous Ireland born  author of Britsh Mystery novels.The “noir” genre however starts in Ireland much later. For the most part it only began 20 years ago.

 It is tempting, and certainly justified to see a noir mood in landmark works such as Odd Man Out (Michael Joseph, 1945) by Belfast based author Frederick Laurence Green (1902–1953). Its 1947 adaptation by Carol Reed is classic film noir.  And one could, too, list a number of forerunners to Irish Noir, starting with Rearden Conner’s violent novel Shake Hands with the Devil (London, Dent 1933, also a 1959 movie with James Cagney). However, if we want to locate  Irish Noir as a literary and mass market phenomenon, the following works constitute milestones in its current development.  The list is far from being exhaustive and the production of Irish Noir novels keeps expanding, amounting already to several hundred volumes.