Early life McKinty was born in
Belfast,
Northern Ireland in 1968. The fourth of five children, he grew up in the Victoria area of
Carrickfergus,
County Antrim. His father was a welder and
boilermaker at the
Harland and Wolff shipyard before becoming a merchant seaman. He grew up reading science fiction and crime novels by the likes of
Ursula Le Guin,
J G Ballard and
Jim Thompson. He studied law at the
University of Warwick and politics and philosophy at the
University of Oxford. After graduating from Oxford in 1993, McKinty moved to
New York and found work in a number of occupations: security guard, barman, bookstore clerk, rugby coach, door to door salesman and librarian for the
Columbia University Library. In 1999, while his wife studied for a Fulbright in Israel, McKinty played
loose head prop forward for the
Jerusalem Lions Rugby Club. In 2000, he relocated to
Denver, Colorado, to become a high school English teacher. He found his greatest success and critical acclaim with the Sean Duffy series, following the eponymous Royal Ulster Constabulary Sergeant during
The Troubles, beginning with 2012's
The Cold Cold Ground. In 2019, the author made this comment about that novel: "It didn't sell very well, but it ended up getting the best reviews of my career. I got shortlisted for an Edgar, won a couple of awards, and so then that set me on that path for the next six years of reluctantly, kind of being dragged into writing about Northern Ireland in the 1980s". The third Duffy book, ''
In the Morning I'll Be Gone'', won the 2014
Ned Kelly Award for Best Novel. McKinty has been an especially astute observer of class in fiction. He also began working as a writer and reviewer for a number of publications including
The Guardian,
The Sydney Morning Herald,
The Washington Post,
The Independent,
The Australian,
The Irish Times and
Harpers.
Quitting writing and The Chain McKinty quit writing in 2017 after being evicted from his rented house, citing a lack of income from his novels, and instead took work as an
Uber driver and a bartender. Upon hearing of his situation, fellow crime author
Don Winslow passed some of his books to his agent, the screenwriter and producer
Shane Salerno. In a late-night phone call, Salerno persuaded McKinty to write what would become
The Chain. Salerno loaned the author ("advance on the advance") $10,000 to help him survive financially during the process. The stand-alone thriller was inspired by the
chain letters of his youth and contemporary reports of
hostage exchanges. McKinty returned to writing after the book landed him a six-figure English-language book deal, and was
optioned for a film adaptation by Paramount Pictures. In an interview on CBS McKinty talked about never giving up and took the interviewer, Jeff Glor, to Plum Island, Massachusetts, where
The Chain is set.
The Chain was published in 37 countries. He often uses the classic noir tropes of revenge and betrayal to explore his characters'
existential quest for meaning in a bleak but lyrically intense universe. Steve Dougherty writing in
The Wall Street Journal praised McKinty's use of irony and humour as a counterpoint to the violent world inhabited by McKinty's Sean Duffy character. Liam McIlvanney, writing in the
Irish Times, singled out McKinty's lyrical prose style as the defining characteristic of the Duffy series. Some reviewers have criticised the explicit use of violence in his novels. However, in reviewing McKinty's
Fifty Grand in
The Guardian, John O'Connor called him a "master craftsman of violence and redemption, up there with the likes of
Dennis Lehane." His novel
The Dead Yard was selected by
Publishers Weekly as one of the 12 Best Novels of 2006.
Audible selected
Falling Glass as the Best Mystery or Thriller of 2011. ''In the Morning I'll Be Gone'' was named as one of the 10 best crime novels of 2014 by the American Library Association. In 2016,
The Guardian included book 5 of the Sean Duffy series,
Rain Dogs, about the investigation of a death at
Carrickfergus Castle, in their "The best recent thrillers" coverage. ==Awards and honours==