Special Guest Post by Pam Lecky, Author of The Wild Atlantic Murders (2 book series)

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

From Book 1: Welcome to Westport, where the wild beauty of Ireland’s western coast 

hides deadly secrets…

Inspiration for The Wild Atlantic Murders Series

Talk about the past catching up with you! In a way, it has. Don’t get me wrong; I love historical fiction and will continue to write in that genre. However, when I recently contemplated ‘what’s next’, I couldn’t resist thinking about my roots, not only my family ones, but my reading habits as well.

Crime fiction has always fascinated me, but strangely enough, it wasn’t Agatha Christie’s books that caught my attention; it was PD James. I was a teenager when I read the first one, probably Cover Her Face. I was hooked straight away and continued to devour her books. Then I discovered Elizabeth George and Inspector Lynley. 

And when my father introduced me to Dorothy L Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey, my addiction to crime fiction was complete. To this day, I love a good crime story or thriller. Interweaving characters, plots, and settings isn’t easy, but those authors whose work I fell in love with all those years ago had one thing in common: they did it effortlessly. Much as I love writing my Lucy Lawrence Mysteries, I wanted a new challenge, and so attempting contemporary crime fiction felt like the right direction to go in.

My original idea was a female PI series based in Dublin, with my main character visiting locations all over Ireland as she pursued cases. After much discussion with my editor, however, we agreed that my protagonist would be an amateur sleuth instead and would be based in a small rural community. And that is how Ali Brennan (landscape designer with a surprising talent for solving crime) and the village of Glenfinn came into being. In the first book, 

Ali moves to Mayo to set up a branch of the family business, but also to escape a disastrous relationship break-up with DI Aidan Cahill. She is soon joined by her nephew, Gavan, who has just dropped out of college.

Why a landscape designer, you ask? I wanted my protagonist to be a professional, running her own business, and as I studied horticulture and design with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), and had even built a show garden at the Bloom Festival in the Pheonix’s Park in Dublin, it is a world I am familiar with. It also offers a host of interesting scenarios that I fully intend to exploit (for murderous intent, of course!).

But when it came to location, I didn’t have to think twice. My mother hailed from a small village in Co. Mayo, in the west of Ireland. As a child, I loved to go there and have always felt it was my spiritual home. Over the years, I have explored and come to love the wild and rugged coast of The Wild Atlantic Way, of which Co. Mayo is only a small part. But again, links to family meant that the area around Westport and Clew Bay drew me in the most. 

There are many lovely villages and towns on the shore of the bay in which I could have landed my characters, but none had all the ingredients I was looking for. Glenfinn, although completely fictional, is a small coastal village located close to Ireland’s holy mountain, Croagh Patrick, and is inspired by many of those wonderful real places. It is now home (at least in my head!) to a whole host of interesting characters, some of whom may not live for very long… sadly!

Like most crime writers, for me the puzzle is everything. I wanted to create a locked-room type scenario, which is why the victim in The Clew Bay Detectives dies alone on a small island in the middle of Clew Bay whilst seal watching. On the surface, it looks like an unfortunate accident. John Clifford-Murphy was a diabetic and died because of it. But was that really what happened? 

When Ali is approached by the man’s wife, who can’t accept the Gardaí’s assertion that her husband’s death was a tragedy and nothing more, Ali’s innate curiosity gets the better of her, and she starts to ask questions. The ripples from the murder continue to affect the close local community, and once hidden secrets emerge, the danger to Ali and Gavan escalates. Then just when Ali thinks they have the answers, she is forced to confront a past she thought she had left behind, with near-tragic results.

The second book in the series, Murder in County Mayo, will be published in November, and pre-order is now available. When Grace Clark vanishes from an isolated farmhouse on the windswept County Mayo coast one bitter January morning, the Gardaí have their suspect within days: her partner, Cormac. But Ali Brennan is certain he's been framed. When a second body is discovered, she has only days to untangle a decades-old grudge before she becomes the killer's next victim...

The Body at Kincora Estate, the third book in the series, will be published in June 2027.

I hope readers will come to love this part of Ireland as much as I do, and over the course of the series I will explore the area too. Although this series is essentially cozy crime, it is at the harder end of the scale and reflects modern Ireland and its issues.

Pam Lecky

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About the Author

Pam is an Irish author of historical and contemporary crime and mystery, published by Storm Publishing and Avon Books UK (Harper Collins). Pam's bestselling Victorian murder mystery series features Lucy Lawrence, along with her trusty maid, Mary, and the enigmatic investigator, Phineas Stone. Lucy solves some nasty crimes along the way and although she is often a magnet for trouble, she invariably comes good in the end. The books are set in the UK and Europe during the late Victorian period. 

The Sarah Gillespie espionage series (trilogy) features an Irish woman working for MI5 during WW2. Pam has also written a standalone WW2 murder mystery, Under A Lightning Sky, set during the Blitz. 

The Bowes Inheritance, Pam’s debut novel, was awarded the B.R.A.G. Medallion; was shortlisted for the Carousel Aware Prize 2016; made 'Editor's Choice' by the Historical Novel Society; long-listed for the Historical Novel Society 2016 Indie Award; and chosen as a Discovered Diamond in 2017.

Pam’s current project is The Wild Atlantic Murders series, a contemporary Irish crime series (cozy crime with a bit of an edge!). The first book, The Clew Bay Detectives, was published in June 2026 and is set in Co. Mayo and features a landscape designer, Ali Brennan, who discovers she has a surprising talent for solving crime. Murder in County Mayo is slated for release in November 2026 and the third book, A Body at Kincora Estate, will be published in June 2027. Pam is represented by Thérèse Coen at Susanna Lea Associates Literary Agency, London. Pam is a member of the Historical Novel Society, The Crime Writers' Association and the Society of Authors. Find out more at https://pamlecky.com and find Pam on Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky @pamlecky.bsky.social