Award- winning and best selling crime author Catherine Ryan Howard told David Hennessy about her latest book, Burn After Reading.
Burn After Reading is Catherine Ryan Howard’s eighth novel.
It follows a string of bestselling crime novels from the Cork author that have been included in the New York Times Best Thrillers of the Year, the Washington Post’s Best Mysteries and Thrillers of the Year and the Sunday Times Best Thrillers of the Year.
Her work has been shortlisted for the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, the UK Crime Writers Association John Creasey/ New Blood and Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Awards, and the An Post Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year multiple times.
The London-based Dublin crime author Jane Casey, recently featured in The Irish World, describes Catherine Ryan Howard as ‘The Queen of high concept crime fiction’.
Catherine Ryan Howard is published in 20 languages and a number of her titles have been optioned for screen, including one that is being adapted at the moment.
Her debut novel Distress Signals, published in 2016, was shortlisted for both the IBA Books Are My Bag Crime Novel of the Year and the CWA John Creasey/ New Blood Dagger.
The success would see her become part of a large and growing community of female Irish crime and thriller authors.
She would follow this up in 2018 with the critically acclaimed The Liar’s Girl which saw its main character return to Ireland after a decade living in Holland to help police uncover the truth of her best friend who was murdered in college, a crime her boyfriend at the time was convicted for.
Catherine Ryan Howard would follow this with the stories Rewind, The Nothing Man, 56 Days, Run Time and The Trap which took a lot of inspiration from the real life case of The Vanishing Triangle.
The pandemic-inspired 56 Days is about to get a streaming adaption.
The thriller, Catherine’s fifth novel, about a couple locked down together in Dublin, won the An Post Irish Crime Fiction Book of the Year and was longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award. A screen adaptation starring Dove Cameron and Avan Jogia will debut exclusively on Amazon Prime Video in early 2026.
Burn After Reading sees its protagonist Emily, an author who has for a long time struggled to follow up her hit debut novel and never been able to deliver the second book of the deal she signed with her publisher, asked to take on a job that no one else wants and because she owes her publisher a book, she can’t say no.
Former cyclist Jack Smyth ran into flames in a desperate attempt to save his wife from their burning home, he was, tragically, too late – but hailed a hero.
Or that was the story until it emerged that Kate was dead long before the fire began. Suspicion has stalked him ever since. After all, there’s no smoke without fire.
A year on, he’s signed a book deal. He wants to tell his side of the story, to prove his own innocence in print. He just needs someone to help him write it. Emily has never ghostwritten anything before, but she knows what it’s like to live with a guilty secret. And she’s about to learn that there are some stories that should never be told…
Smyth has always protested his innocence but long been convicted in the court of public opinion.
But Emily also has a dark secret about why she has been unable to write beyond her hit book.
Howard’s books often take inspiration from real life.
The spark for the book in part lies in the story of OJ Simpson, the late American football star turned actor who was charged with the murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman in 1992. His legal trial took place under the glare of the media, and OJ — to the surprise of many — was found not guilty.
But like Jack in this story he was convicted in the court of public opinion and went to his grave last year without any exoneration, instead with his verdict being seen as a failure of justice that allowed a killer to walk free.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, he even wrote a book called If I Did It.
Burn After Reading deals with similar themes of presumed guilt and true crime being consumed very much as entertainment.
How did the idea for Burn After Reading Come to you?
“I had always been fascinated by the inexplicable book deal OJ Simpson signed back in 2004 to publish what was supposedly a hypothetical confession in which he’d admit to murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, but not really, because he was still maintaining his innocence even though the DNA evidence his jury ignored proved his guilt beyond all doubt.
“I was reminded of it when I was watching the Oscar-winning documentary OJ: Made in America – 7 hours long but worth the commitment! – which featured an interview with OJ’s ghostwriter.
“I couldn’t stop imagining what it must have been like and started to think it would make a great premise for a thriller: a ghostwriter and a man who everyone thinks is a murderer, locked together in a room.
“But I wanted my maybe-murderer’s guilt to be less cut and dry, and the ghostwriter to be inexperienced and a woman.
“I’d just been to Seaside, the town in Florida where The Truman Show was filmed, and thought a fictional version of it – a half-built, emptier, eerie version – would be the perfect place for these ghostwriting sessions to take place. That was the beginning of Burn After Reading.”
As you say yourself in the author’s note at the end, fact is often stranger than fiction. And as Diane says at the end, ‘All great fiction comes from something real’. Two very true statements, aren’t they?
“Some small aspect of a real-life case is often a jumping-off point for me, and anyone who’s watched even a few Netflix true-crime documentaries will know that you really couldn’t make up the events that unfold in them.
“For instance, OJ Simpson’s ghostwriter had testified for the prosecution at the trial.
“He was a neighbour of Brown’s and heard her dog wailing on the night of the murders.
“His testimony helped establish the prosecution’s timeline. Years later, completely coincidentally, an old colleague of his thought of him for the ghostwriting gig.
“If I put that in a novel, my editor would tell me to take it out – and I’d agree, because it wouldn’t be believable. And yet.”
Emily reminds me of Adele from Run Time in that she has no idea what she’s walking into, what she’s taking on, what is waiting for her and also how, accepting a job that meant flying across the Atlantic, meant she was all on her own. Do you like to throw your characters into those sort of situations?
“If the main character knew exactly what was coming and was completely prepared for it, it wouldn’t be a very thrilling thriller.
“What I find funny is that sometimes you’ll get feedback from readers that questions whether it was wise to accept such a job, or they’ll say things like, ‘Why didn’t Emily turn around and go home the moment she got there? I would have!’
“But if no one ran up the stairs instead of out the door whenever they heard a noise, there’d be no horror movies. If people only accepted invitations after extensive research, you’d have to cancel out a slew of Agatha Christie novels and all their pretenders.
“Drama doesn’t come from people making good decisions.”
What was it that made you want to make Jack as well as Ben competitive cyclists? Is it a sport you have interest in? Did you follow the coverage of stories like Lance Armstrong and others that show the darker side of the sport?
“I’m not particularly interested in it but I did follow the Armstrong scandal and read some really interesting books that opened my eyes to the realities of the sport, especially The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton.
“Cycling is fascinating because not everyone on the team is trying to win – most riders are domestiques, which literally means servant; their job is to help the team leader win – and most riders don’t earn anywhere near the crazy amounts that, say, footballers or Formula 1 drivers can and do.
“This made the sport perfect for Jack, and the role of the domestique great for Jack and his former teammate Ben’s relationship.”
You often write from the POV of the killer (The Trap, The Nothing Man), would you say you find character studies more interesting than whodunnits?
“When I sit down to write a new book, it’s about the idea and what I think is the best way to tell it.
“Sometimes, that includes a killer’s point-of-view.
“It’s always an interesting challenge because everyone is the hero of their life.
“No serial killer is thinking anything except that he’s right to be doing what he’s doing, so what’s his reason?
“What story is he telling himself?
“How is he justifying his behaviour?
“I enjoy the challenge of coming up with their narratives.
“Real monsters are ordinary monsters and they’re the most fun to write.”
I see from the book sleeve that 56 Days is being adapted into a TV series. Can’t wait to see it. Is that exciting? Have you been part of that process writing the script, going to set, etc or do you prefer to let them get on with it?
“It’s very exciting – I got to visit the set last summer which was very surreal.
“It was like finding out that my imaginary friends had come to life but had all been hanging out without me.
“I am technically a co-executive producer but I didn’t have anything to do with it – I’m quite happy to hand it over and not be at all involved.
“My attitude is that I know how to write novels but I don’t know anything about making TV, so the idea that I would try to tell people who’ve been making it – and making it very successfully – for decades already how to do their job is insane to me.
“The series will hit Amazon Prime Video early next year. I can’t wait for everyone to see it.”
When did you know you wanted to be an author or did you always know?
“I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I realised that books didn’t just magically appear, that someone wrote them and that that was their job.
“I work with a picture on my desk of me aged eight, tapping away on the typewriter that Santa has just bought, on Christmas morning.
“This is my dream job and I’m very grateful I get to do it.”
What do you think of what has happened in recent years with a plethora of great Irish crime writers such as yourself, Liz Nugent and Jane Casey all coming out with brilliant work? Do you think there’s any particular reason that a whole scene that didn’t exist before has emerged? Is there something about the Irish psyche, and particularly Irish female psyche, that lends itself to crime/ suspense writing?
“I can only speak for myself, but I think it’s a combination of things.
“When I was a teenager, the headlines were filled with news of women literally disappearing off the face of the earth – the so-called Vanishing Triangle, where eight women went missing in Ireland over a period of five years, none of whom have been found three decades later.
“It brought true crime home and I think it made Ireland feel like a very unsafe place for women – and this was on top of the country long being dominated by a patriarchal church, the shameful history of mother-and-baby homes, divorce not being legal until 1995, etc etc.
“I was also a voracious reader of crime fiction but it all seemed to be set in the US and the UK; I wanted to read similar stories set closer to home.
“Then I think in the wake of the success of novels like Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train, there was an explosion in female crime and thriller writing across the board, and Irish writers really took that and ran with it.
“Now, we really seem to punch above our weight.”
Is there anyone else you would recommend for someone who has read all of the stuff by you/ Nugent/ Casey?
“I’d also recommend Andrea Mara, Gill Perdue, Oliver Kiernan, Catherine Kirwan, Jo Spain and Andrea Carter.”
What is next for you? Have you started your next book and can you tease us anything about it?
“I just finished the second draft of my next book and no! Sorry…”
Burn after Reading by Catherine Ryan Howard is out now on Penguin.
For more information, click here.