'I became very fond of UCC': John Connolly on his latest novel and his PhD studies in Cork
John Connolly was at UCC for a PhD in creative writing. Picture: Ivan Gimenez Costa
As one of Ireland’s most successful authors, John Connolly has nothing left to prove. He has won every crime-writing accolade worth mentioning and his series featuring the detective Charlie Parker has been a fixture on bestseller lists around the world for more than two decades.
He has also pursued many other literary projects, from the dark fantasy series to an acclaimed biography of Stan Laurel. The Dublin author could be forgiven for putting his feet up and enjoying the fruits of his success but he is busier than ever and still happy to hit the road to meet readers. When we speak, he is swotting up on his Spanish ahead of a visit to the country to promote his latest Charlie Parker novel, the 23rd in the series.
“I’ve reached the stage where I probably don’t need to spend much time with writers, to be honest. But to meet readers, librarians and booksellers, I genuinely enjoy doing that. I love those Q&As at the end of an evening. And also, they are people who read, and I’m a writer, and I read, and those are the people at a party that I would gravitate towards quite naturally anyway. To be able to spend time doing that, it really isn’t a chore.”
Nor is spending time with Charlie Parker, whose latest outing centres around the topical issue of detention in the US — in the guise of educational facilities for troubled teens. Connolly says that his many other creative pursuits — including hosting a music show on the digital radio station RTÉ Gold — help him keep the series fresh.
“The tendency is that you can fall back on your laurels a little bit. You do try to write the best book you can each time. What helps for me is that I go off and do other things in between the Parker books and try to stretch the muscles a bit. By doing that, I’ve learnt something new and come back refreshed to the Parker books.”
One of those ‘other things’ was a creative writing PhD at UCC. In typical high-achieving fashion, Connolly completed it in three years, alongside his novel-writing. He already has an English degree from Trinity and a masters in journalism from DCU; the urge to return to academia came about from his book an ambitious survey of Irish genre writing which was published in 2021.
“Having done that, I fell in love with research again. Usually a creative writing PhD involves writing a novel or a collection of short stories and I kind of knew I could do that. I wanted to do an academic PhD and UCC were very accommodating, as long as what I wrote would to some degree reflect back on my own practice. So it became a PhD about the connections between detective fiction and genre literature in Ireland.”
The workload would weigh heavily on most people but Connolly relished the experience. “I loved doing it, it was a huge pleasure. I was going down to Cork every week for two nights at one point, and I became very fond of UCC and the city.”
Connolly’s PhD supervisor was Dr Eibhear Walshe, the esteemed writer and director of the creative writing department at UCC, who died suddenly in the summer of 2024.
“I was his last PhD student and he had just signed off on it. I was very upset, I was hugely fond of him, he was an exceptional person, a sweet, brilliant man. He wore his brilliance very lightly and those people are quite rare. Part of my thesis was to do a memoir semester with him, which opened up all kinds of ways of writing to me. I will always be grateful to him and UCC.”
Did he feel a sense of pride when he was conferred with his doctorate? “I just felt a sense of relief. They make you wear a cap which made me look like an elderly renaissance painter. Even Rembrandt couldn’t pull that look off. That part I avoided, so I didn’t get any formal pictures taken, I felt I looked faintly ridiculous.”
And he certainly won’t be utilising the honorific that comes with the qualification. “I very much don’t call myself ‘doctor’. If someone collapses on a plane, all I can do is recite them a consoling poem, I’m not going to be much good for anything else.”
One of the topics Connolly explored in his PhD was his childhood experience of OCD and its influence on his writing. It inspired his novel his 2006 novel about a young boy who takes refuge in his imagination after the death of his mother.
“It is something I’m surprised at, when I go into schools, just how many kids would nod when you mentioned OCD. It is quite common in adolescence, that sense of the world being outside your control and creating this illusion of control. I am one of those rare writers who doesn’t have anything unfinished in their drawer because I don’t like leaving things unfinished and I suspect that is a residue of that condition. I don’t think you ever shake it off entirely.”
Connolly is still very much committed to the Parker series, although he says he doesn’t want it to “drag into infinity”. “With this book, regular readers will see that I am trying to frame the series as something that will have a conclusion, that won’t leave people hanging. And I have been quite conscious of that since about the fifth book, where I thought that I can try and construct a series that will fold back on itself, that if you read it all in order, at the end, it will make sense as one long narrative.”
However, given that a television adaptation of the Parker books is in development, with Bryan Cranston and Colin Farrell attached, Connolly is aware that his hand may be forced somewhat in this regard.
“I say this very hesitantly as most of these things never happen even with the best will in the world — but assuming that it were to go ahead, they want to do it as five seasons that will come to an end. I have one eye on what they’re doing and thinking would my final book have to come out at the same time as what they’re doing or will I just let them do what they’re doing and pace myself in a different way. I haven’t quite figured it out.”
One thing is for sure, however, and that is Connolly’s drive to excel at whatever he does. “I have a couple of books in train that are not Parker novels. It is good to keep pushing yourself. It’s a bit like the Spanish thing — I could go to Spain and do everything through an interpreter. It would be less stressful but also I fear that part of my brain would atrophy.”
- , by John Connolly, published by Hodder and Stoughton, is out now
