Sam Blake is the No 1 bestselling author of the Cat Connolly Garda police trilogy: the runaway bestseller Little Bones, In Deep Water and No Turning Back (Bonnier 2016 – 2018)

Plus many No 1 thriller standalones (Corvus Atlantic):

• Keep Your Eyes on Me (2020)
• The Dark Room (2021)
• High Pressure (2022) ebook and audio only – download for free when you join Sam’s Readers’ Club
• Remember My Name (2022)
• The Mystery of Four (2023)
• Three Little Birds (2024)
• The Killing Sense (2025)
  
• Your Every Move (2026)
• Kill Lane (2026/27)

And YA thrillers (Gill Books):

• Something Terrible Happened Last Night (2023)
• Something’s About to Blow Up (2024)

Across all her books she has been a multiple Irish Times No 1, a multiple Eason No 1 bestseller, a top ten Sunday Times bestseller, and in the Irish Times top ten for over 60 weeks. She has outsold Graham Norton (briefly!) and The Mystery of Four made the TV news in 2024 when it was knocked off the Eason No 1 slot by Prince Harry’s Spare.

Little Bones, The Dark Room and Remember My Name, and The Killing Sense were shortlisted for Irish Crime Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and Something Terrible Happened Last Night was shortlisted for YA/Teen Novel of the Year and the Great Reads Awards. Something’s About to Blow Up was also shortlisted for Independent Education Service YA/Teen Novel of the Year and went on to win!

Sam Blake*  is originally from St. Albans in Hertfordshire but has lived at the foot of the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland for more years than she lived in the UK. Married to a retired member of An Garda Siochana she has two adult children, three cats and had sole responsibility for an ant farm while her eldest studied rocket science to become a Space Master. The youngest is studying PPE but definitely doesn’t want to be a politician.

*Sam Blake herself is a character from the imagination of Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin who is the founder of the multi award winning writing resources website Writing.ie, The Inkwell Group publishing consultancy and the fabulously successful online coaching and mentoring group for writers Writers Ink. As Sam, she is the founder of Murder One, Ireland’s International Crime Writing Festival. 

Vanessa was appointed Chair of the Board of the Society of Authors in 2024, the UK trade union for all types of writers, illustrators and translators. With over 12,500 members, the Society was established in 1884 and continues a long tradition of campaigning for author rights. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) – notable past fellows include Charles Dickens, Benjamin Franklin, Stephen Hawking, Karl Marx, Adam Smith, Nelson Mandela, David Attenborough, William Hogarth and Tim Berners-Lee. A past chair of Irish PEN, she is also a past board member of the Crime Writers Association.

Sam’s ‘Behind the Bestseller’ podcast via Headstuff.org is available on all platforms. 

Sam has been writing fiction since her husband set sail across the Atlantic for eight weeks and she had an idea for a book. Many hundreds of thousands of words later (and five draft manuscripts of varying quality) her debut  Little Bones hit the bestseller list in Ireland in May 2016. 

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