The Brighton hotel bombing was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) assassination attempt against members of the British government on 12 October 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, England. A long-delay time bomb was planted in the hotel by Patrick Magee before Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet arrived at the hotel for the Conservative Party conference. Although Thatcher narrowly escaped the blast, five people were killed, including a Conservative Member of Parliament, and 31 injured.
Free Derry was a self-declared autonomous Irish nationalist area of Derry, Northern Ireland, that existed between 1969 and 1972, during the Troubles. It emerged during the Northern Ireland civil rights movement, which sought to end discrimination against the Irish Catholic/nationalist minority by the Protestant/unionist government. The civil rights movement highlighted the sectarianism and police brutality of the overwhelmingly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The area, which included the mainly-Catholic Bogside and Creggan neighbourhoods, was first secured by community activists on 5 January 1969 following an incursion into the Bogside by RUC officers. Residents built barricades and carried clubs and similar arms to prevent the RUC from entering. Its name was taken from a sign painted on a gable wall in the Bogside which read, "You are now entering Free Derry". For six days the area was a no-go area, after which the residents took down the barricades and RUC patrols resumed. Tensions remained high over the following months.
The Glens of Antrim, known locally as simply The Glens, is a region of County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It comprises nine glens (valleys), that radiate from the Antrim Plateau to the coast. The Glens are an area of outstanding natural beauty and are a major tourist attraction in north Antrim.
The Milltown Cemetery attack took place on 16 March 1988 at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the large funeral of three Provisional IRA members killed in Gibraltar, an Ulster Defence Association (UDA) member, Michael Stone, attacked the mourners with hand grenades and pistols. He had learned there would be no police or armed IRA members at the cemetery. As Stone then ran towards the nearby motorway, a large crowd chased him and he continued shooting and throwing grenades. Some of the crowd caught Stone and beat him, but he was rescued by the police and arrested. Three people had been killed and more than 60 wounded. The "unprecedented, one-man attack" was filmed by television news crews and caused shock around the world.
The Shankill Road bombing was carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on 23 October 1993 and is one of the most well-known incidents of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The IRA aimed to assassinate the leadership of the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA), supposedly attending a meeting above Frizzell's fish shop on the Shankill Road, Belfast. Two IRA members disguised as deliverymen entered the shop carrying a bomb, which detonated prematurely. Ten people were killed: one of the IRA bombers, a UDA member and eight Protestant civilians, two of whom were children. More than fifty people were wounded. The targeted office was empty at the time of the bombing, but the IRA had allegedly realised that the tightly-packed area below would inevitably cause "collateral damage" of civilian casualties and continued regardless. However the IRA have denied this saying that they intended to evacuate the civilians before the explosion It is alleged that British intelligence failed to act on a tip off about the bombing.
Shane Salerno is an American screenwriter, producer, and Chief Creative Officer of The Story Factory. His writing credits include the movies Armageddon, Savages,Shaft, and the TV series Hawaii Five-0. He was chosen by director James Cameron to co-write the four sequels to Avatar, set to release in 2022, 2024, 2026 and 2028. He spent ten years writing, producing, financing, and directing the documentary Salinger, and co-writing with David Shields the companion book which became a New York Times bestseller.
Divis Tower is a 20-floor, 200-foot (61 m) tall tower in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is located in Divis Street which is the lower section of the Falls Road. It is currently the fifteenth-tallest building in Belfast.
Joe McCann was an Irish republican paramilitary. A member of the Irish Republican Army and later the Official Irish Republican Army, he was active in politics from the early 1960s and participated in the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He was shot dead during a confrontation with RUC Special Branch members and British paratroopers in 1972.
The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger is an annual award given by the British Crime Writers' Association for best thriller of the year. The award is sponsored by the estate of Ian Fleming.
The Ned Kelly Awards are Australia's leading literary awards for crime writing in both the crime fiction and true crime genres. They were established in 1996 by the Crime Writers Association of Australia to reward excellence in the field of crime writing within Australia.
Adrian McKinty is a Northern Irish writer of crime and mystery novels and young adult fiction, best known for his 2020 award-winning thriller, The Chain, and the Sean Duffy novels set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. He is a winner of the Edgar Award, the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Macavity Award, the Ned Kelly Award, the Barry Award, the Audie Award, the Anthony Award and the International Thriller Writers Award. He has been shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger and the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière.
Sam McAughtry was an Irish / British writer, broadcaster and raconteur.
Barry Maitland is an Australian author of crime fiction. After studying architecture at Cambridge, Maitland practised and taught in the UK before moving to Australia, where he became a Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle. He retired in 2000 and took up writing full-time.
The Barry Award is a crime literary prize awarded annually since 1997 by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, an American quarterly publication for crime fiction readers. From 2007 to 2009 the award was jointly presented with the publication Mystery News. The prize is named after Barry Gardner, an American critic.
James Watt also known as Tonto is a former Northern Irish loyalist who was the top bomb maker for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) in the mid-1970s. In 1978, Watt was convicted and given nine separate life sentences for murder and attempted murder. These included bombings which killed a ten-year-old boy and two teenagers in two attacks carried out in April 1977 as a part of a UVF bombing campaign against republicans.
The Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island is a 2008 book by Chloe Hooper. It is about the events surrounding the death in custody of Aboriginal Australian man, Cameron Doomadgee. It won numerous awards and was shortlisted for many others in 2009.
Dead I Well May be is a 2003 novel by Irish/Australian author Adrian McKinty. It is his second novel, following Orange Rhymes With Everything, and was nominated for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award for the best thriller of the year. Booklist chose Dead I May Well Be to be included in its ten best crime novels of the year. The plot is often brutal and dark which McKinty describes vividly.
Dervla McTiernan is an Irish crime novelist.
The Chain is a 2019 novel written by Adrian McKinty.
