Eoin McNamee

This article is about the writer. For the Irish Republican, see Eoin McNamee (Irish Republican).

Eoin McNamee (1961 in Kilkeel, County Down) is an Irish writer.

He has written two novellas: The Last of Deeds (Dublin, Raven Arts Press, 1989), which was shortlisted for the 1989 Irish Times/Aer Lingus Award for Irish Literature, and Love in History (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1992).

His novels are Resurrection Man (London, Picador, 1994), which detailed the bloodletting of the Ulster Volunteer Force gang, the Shankill Butchers; Booker-nominated The Blue Tango (London, Faber & Faber, 2001), which examined the murder of Lancelot Curran's 19-year-old daughter; The Ultras (Faber & Faber, 2004), about the killing of Robert Nairac; 12:23, based on the final days of Diana, Princess of Wales (Faber & Faber, June 2007); Orchid Blue (Faber & Faber, 2010), which looked at the last hanging in Ireland, in Crumlin Road gaol, of Robert McGladdery for the murder of 19-year-old Pearl Gamble, near Newry, in 1961; and Blue Is the Night (published in 2014), which deals with the involvement of Lancelot Curran in a murder trial in the Northern Ireland of the late 1940s. Blue Is the Night won the 2015 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year.

He has also written the Navigator trilogy, for children, The Navigator, City of Time and The Frost Child.

The film version of Resurrection Man, for which he wrote the script, was released in 1998. McNamee also wrote the script for I Want You, a film directed by Michael Winterbottom.

He has also written a series under the pseudonym John Creed: The Sirius Crossing; The Day of the Dead and Black Cat Black Dog. These feature the character of intelligence officer Jack Valentine. McNamee commenced writing another series for children, the first book of which is The Ring of Five, and the second of which is The Unknown Spy, both of which are based on plotting and espionage. He was awarded the Macauley Fellowship for Irish Literature in 1990. He lives in County Sligo.