Bio

His first novel, Borderlands, published by Macmillan New Writing, was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger 2007 and was hailed by The Times as ‘one of (2007’s) most impressive debuts.’ The second novel in the series, Gallows Lane, was shortlisted for both the 2009 Irish Book Awards/Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year and the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2010. Bleed A River Deep, the third Devlin novel, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of their Best Books of 2010.

Brian's fifth novel, Little Girl Lost, which introduced a new series featuring DS Lucy Black, won the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award in 2011 and was a New York Times Bestseller in the US and a No.1 Bestseller in the UK. The follow-up novel, Hurt, was published in late 2013 in the UK and Ireland by Constable and Robinson and was published in the USA under the title Someone You Know. The third Lucy Black novel was published in 2015 in the UK and Ireland as Preserve the Dead and in the USA, under the title The Forgotten Ones. Bad Blood, the fourth in the Lucy Black series, was published in May 2017. His tenth novel and first standalone, The Last Crossing, was published in Spring 2020 and won an unprecedented Highly Commended Award in the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2021. The sixth Devlin novel, Blood Ties, published in March 2021 was longlisted for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year 2022.

His most recent standalone novel, The Empty Room, was published in March 2022 and became an instant Sunday Times Bestseller.

In 2023, Brian was kindly invited by the Linen Hall Library in Belfast to establish an archive of his writing there. The archive was launched in September 2023 and includes early drafts, stories, notebooks etc.

His new novel, The One You Least Suspect, publishes in May 2025.