Claire McGowan

Claire McGowan grew up in Rostrevor, County Down, took a degree in English and French at Oxford, and spent time in the charity sector in London before her first crime novel appeared in 2012. She created the forensic psychologist Paula Maguire, whose six investigations play out in the invented Irish border town of Ballyterrin, served as director of the Crime Writers' Association, and taught on Britain's first crime-writing MA, at City University in London. Her women's fiction carries the name Eva Woods. Are You Awake?, issued by Thomas & Mercer in 2022, puts together two people who cannot sleep: Mary, worn down by two small children, and Tim, who never feels safe enough to rest. They meet in a park on a hot night, a girl goes missing, and each of them may have witnessed something. The same year brought her first non-fiction book, The Vanishing Triangle, about women who vanished in Ireland during the 1990s in cases that were never solved.