Dervla’s A
thriller killer BY LLOYD GORMAN Perhaps the most famous lawyer in Perth today is no longer at the Bar, but the world of crime still looms large for this individual.
Crime Queen Dervla McTiernan Image: Twitter @abbeysbookshop
Dervla McTiernan studied corporate law in University College Galway and went on to become a solicitor, training in Dublin. She returned to Oranmore, Galway to start her own practice which she built up over 12 years. Her practice, and her husband’s engineering work, were devastated by the economic crash in Ireland, and the couple came to Perth in 2011 where she got a job with the Mental Health Commission. The move changed everything for her. “I don’t think I would be a writer today, and I wouldn’t have a book deal if I had stayed in Ireland,” she admits. “I studied law at university, and though I knew from day one that it wasn’t right for me I stuck it out through two degrees, law school, my apprenticeship and almost twelve years in practice. It wasn’t all bad, and I worked with some great people, but law is a very challenging environment. It’s adversarial by its nature, the hours are long and you have to really love the highs to stick it out. I enjoyed the challenge of it in the early years, but I always felt like a fish out of water. Having said that I would still be doing it today if the Global Financial Crisis hadn’t hit and decimated my legal practice. “I saw Tana French speak about her book, Broken Harbour, which is set in one of the ghost housing estates that was left in Ireland after the property crash. She spoke about the rule-followers who were badly hurt by the crash in Ireland. Tana said she was not a rule follower, but I certainly was. When the GFC hit and we lost everything, it was devastating but it
was also freeing. We got to start again and this time we threw out the rulebook. Our little boy was born five weeks after we arrived in Australia, so I didn’t work straight away. When I did go back to work I was determined that I wouldn’t practice law again. I found part-time job and started writing at night, when the work was done and the kids were in bed.” While she had always dabbled with writing, in 2015 on her first public attempt at writing for the Sisters in Crime Scarlet Stiletto short story competition she was shortlisted. This gave her the confidence to finish a manuscript, find an agent and become a Number 1 best selling crime fiction writer within a very short period of time. “In late 2016 my agent sent my manuscript out on submission in Australia and, incredibly, I got six offers of publication!,” she said. “The Ruin was a bestseller in Australia and Ireland, and named an Amazon book of the year in the USA, which was incredible. My second book, The Scholar, came out in Feb 2019 to similar success, and my third, The Good Turn, will be publishing in 2020.” As well as a busy touring schedule (before Covid) and demanding publishing schedule, the former lawyer has been watching recent events in America and elsewhere closely. Her twitter feed is full of posts expressing concern about police brutality, suppression and targeting of the media by authorities and promoting anti-racism causes and similar causes.
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