McGinley foregoes his usual murder mystery genre; instead, he presents an historical novel set during the Anglo-Irish War of 1919 to 1921.The story opens and closes with Declan Osborne in jail, being interrogated by British officers. In between, we learn of the sequence of events that has led him there. Set in Ireland at the time of the Black and Tans, Declan is a young man who sets out to join the cause full of doomed idealism.

Bishop's Delight, set in the confident Ireland of the Celtic Tiger, meditates on the difficulty of separating truth from lies in the frenzy that is the media. When long-serving and charismatic Taoiseach Jim Maguire vanishes while fishing off the Connemara coastline, two rival journalists, Kevin Woody and Tony Sweetman, compete to establish the truth and question the sinister forces that may be at work surrounding Maguire's disappearance. As Woody and Sweetman negotiate their troublesome personal lives while making every effort to keep the story of Maguire's disappearance alive for another day, the uneasy conflict between the old Ireland of stable belief and the new Ireland of questioning uncertainty is exposed.

"He got down on his hands and knees and reached in under the bed where he kept his toolbox. Careful not to make a sound, he searched desperately for a weapon of defence. Then the bedroom door creaked behind him and he knew he was no longer alone in the room..."When one of the few remaining villagers in Leaca is murdered, suspicion falls on the one resident Englishman and outsider, Nick Ambrose.As tensions rise and old forms of law threaten to impose summary justice, the easy and rich fabric of life that has sustained the town for so many years unravels and tears with shocking results.Set in rural western Ireland in 1948, McGinley's novel is a gripping and powerful exploration of community, violence and Irish ways.Review:'Its unrelenting suspense hardly allowed me to put the book aside. You read it as crime fiction but, of course, the fact that the "whodunnit" is not the central question makes the story really interesting. There is so much in it, not only the ethical questions,...

The Devil's Diary is Patrick McGinley's greatest tribute to his master Flann O'Brien, in this dark humoured portrayal of a harrowing Irish landscape in which lunacy reigns.Idealistic love and death, sibling rivalry and obsessive lust are themes familiar to McGinley's work, focusing here on Arty Brennan, who built factories, a supermarket and a noisy motel, trading a spiritually enriching culture for a "hippiedrome" of second-rate 20th century glitter.

Patrick McGinley is able to do what few novelists can: write stories and characters that are drenched in place (specifically, rural Ireland), and yet totally devoid of cheap sentimentality. His landscapes have the edgy, ludicrous beauty of a dream - unstable and prone to capsize into nightmare.

Set against World War II, this is a tragi-comic tale of an Englishman who tries to start a potato farm in rural Ireland, and is mistaken for a hero by the locals - with bizarre consequences, escalating to accidental death, suicide, and murder."McGinley's story is by turns funny and ferocious. His characters live. His dialogue rings true. His world is as real as the book in your hand" - The Washington Post

Kevin Hurley and his earthy twin sister Maureen - who share a remote Irish farmhouse with their bedridden, aged father -have been secret but unashamed lovers for thirty years, ever since their mother's agonizing death from cancer. But now, at 40, Maureen is pregnant, refusing either to go away or to have an abortion. So, to prevent the neighbors from drawing scandalous conclusions, Kevin must find Maureen a partner.

Patrick McGinley's sixth novel, true to his distinctive style, is set in the austere and haunting landscape and shoreline of the author's native county, Donegal, Ireland. Love and death appear as the inescapable enigmas of being in the world. The Red Men is rich in vocabulary, in the particularities of daily life, and in various surprising areas of arcane lore.