Pam Lecky Books

I have always loved reading and writing historical fiction and will continue to write in that genre, however, when I recently contemplated ‘what’s next’, I couldn’t resist thinking about my roots, not only my family ones, but my reading habits as well.

Crime fiction has always fascinated me, but strangely enough, it wasn’t Agatha Christie’s books that caught my attention; it was PD James. I was a teenager when I read the first one, probably Cover Her Face. I was hooked straight away and continued to devour her books. Then I discovered Elizabeth George and Inspector Lynley, and of course Ruth Rendell. And when my father introduced me to Dorothy L Sayers and Lord Peter Wimsey, my addiction to crime fiction was complete. To this day, I love a good crime story or thriller, whether historical or contemporary. Interweaving characters, plots, and settings isn’t easy, but those authors whose work I fell in love with all those years ago had one thing in common: they did it effortlessly. Much as I love writing my Lucy Lawrence Mysteries, I wanted a new challenge, and so attempting contemporary crime fiction felt like the right direction to go in.

My original idea was a female PI series based in Dublin, with my main character visiting locations all over Ireland as she pursued cases. After much discussion with my editor, however, we agreed that my protagonist would be an amateur sleuth instead and would be based in a small rural community. And that is how Ali Brennan (landscape designer with a surprising talent for solving crime) and the village of Glenfinn came into being. In the first book, Ali moves to Mayo to set up a branch of the family business, but also to escape a disastrous relationship break-up with DI Aidan Cahill. She is soon joined by her nephew, Gavan, who has just dropped out of college.

Why a landscape designer, you ask? I wanted my protagonist to be a professional, running her own business. I studied horticulture and design with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), and had even built a show garden at the Bloom Festival in the Pheonix’s Park in Dublin with a very good friend, so it is a world I am very familiar with. It also offers a host of interesting scenarios that I fully intend to exploit (for murderous intent, of course!).

But when it came to location, I didn’t have to think twice. My mother hailed from a small village in Co. Mayo, in the west of Ireland. As a child, I loved to go there and have always felt it was my spiritual home. Over the years, I have explored and come to love the wild and rugged coast of The Wild Atlantic Way, of which Co. Mayo is only a small part. But again, links to family meant that the area around Westport and Clew Bay drew me in the most. There are many lovely villages and towns on the shore of the bay in which I could have landed my characters, but none had all the ingredients I was looking for. Glenfinn, although completely fictional, is a small coastal village located close to Ireland’s holy mountain, Croagh Patrick, and is inspired by many of those wonderful real places. It is now home (at least in my head!) to a whole host of interesting characters, some of whom may not live for very long… sadly!

Like most crime writers, for me the puzzle is everything. I wanted to create a locked-room type scenario, which is why the victim in The Clew Bay Detectives dies alone on a small island in the middle of Clew Bay whilst seal watching. On the surface, it looks like an unfortunate accident. John Clifford-Murphy was a diabetic and died because of it. But was that really what happened? When Ali is approached by the man’s wife, who can’t accept the Gardaí’s assertion that her husband’s death was a tragedy and nothing more, Ali’s innate curiosity gets the better of her, and she starts to ask questions. The ripples from the murder continue to affect the close local community, and once hidden secrets emerge, the danger to Ali and Gavan escalates. Then just when Ali thinks they have the answers, she is forced to confront a past she thought she had left behind, with near-tragic results.

I hope readers will come to love this part of Ireland as much as I do, and over the course of the series I will explore the area too. Although this series is essentially cozy crime, it is at the harder end of the scale and reflects modern Ireland and its issues.

The Clew Bay Detectives is out today, 16^th June 2026, and is available in ebook, paperback and audio format.

The second book, A Murder in County Mayo (now on pre-order) comes out in November 2026, and the third, A Body at Kincora Estate, in June 2027.

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The Clew Bay Detectives Buy Link: https://geni.us/1540-al-aut-am