John Connolly: Tales from the pandemic 

John Connolly released sections of his new book online during lockdown. Finally, the full novel is about to be published, writes Ed Power

John Connolly's The Furies is published on August 4. Picture: Mark Condren/PA. 

Crime fiction isn’t dead but perhaps it is a little green around the gills, says best-selling thriller author John Connolly.

“It is going through one of its periodic downturns,” he says from his home in Rathgar, Dublin. “Other genres are coming up. Women’s contemporary fiction is doing well at the moment. Crime fiction was often a genre read by older people. And so that readership will occasionally need to be replenished with new blood.” Whatever about the milieu, Connolly (54) has been going from strength to strength. Last year he published Shadow Voices: 300 Years of Irish Genre Fiction — a mammoth anthology that celebrated the contribution of Irish writers to science fiction, gothic horror, romance and fantasy.