56 Days: Thriller set in Ireland’s lockdown days comes with a savage twist

Catherine Ryan Howard’s fifth novel is a lesson in how to expertly plot and shape a contemporary drama

Catherine Ryan Howard’s plotting is second to none and she writes with an economy of style that brings to mind the work of Lee Child.

FICTION

56 Days

By Catherine Ryan Howard

Corvus, €15.23

Lockdown wasn’t easy for most of us, but some writers harnessed it as a creative opportunity. For Irish author Catherine Ryan Howard, the restrictions in Ireland necessitated by the pandemic suggested themselves as the perfect context for a thriller in which a couple decide to move in together far too quickly, because of then taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s edict that everyone needed to stay at home and ...