'Dancing Bug' in Oxmantown

Yet another music vid shot in Stoneybatter's back streets. It's for the single "Dancing Bug", a collaboration between Aoife McCann aka Æ Mak on vocals and Le Boom - electronic duo Aimie Mallon and Chris Leech.

Prominent from the start is Carnew Street, also used by the Spice Girls two decades ago for their "Stop" video. Watch out for the fleeting but excellent drone shots of the grid of terraced streets of Oxmantown.

Hanlon's pub and Hanlon's Corner

Hanlon's pub gives its name to Hanlon's Corner at the top of Prussia Street. It's an old Dublin landmark; the bar features in an early chapter of Another Case in Cowtown.

The Ha'penny Bridge: covering the cliches

Surely the Ha'penny Bridge in the centre of Dublin doesn't pop up all that often in Irish crime fiction - not within the actual text I mean?

Yet the famous footbridge does appear with an intensifying frequency on crime novel covers. Take the following handful...

Walshes snug, Stoneybatter

To get a good idea of Walshes pub on Manor Street in Stoneybatter, check out this superb new video by award-winning director and music documentarian Myles O’Reilly.

It's a ballad called "Way Up On The Mountain" by Ye Vagabonds - brothers Diarmuid and Brían Mac Gloinn. The duo currently play Walshes every Monday night.

Canals and docks: 'Becoming Men'

The very centre of the city of Dublin has two sort of "outer" boundaries, both of them involving water: the Grand Canal (on the southside) and Royal Canal (on the northside). Boundaries that are sometimes physical and geographical, that also act as borderlines of dreams and aspirations in a way.

Here's a gem of a short film from 2013 about life in (literally in) the canals and docks over the years.

Lilliput Stores, Rosemount Terrace, Arbour Hill

Talk about timing. It was May 2007, just months before the Irish economy would implode dramatically like a neutron star. I can't imagine a more difficult time to start a new business in Dublin.

Yet that's the very time that a tiny greengrocers and deli called the Lilliput Stores first opened its doors. Or, strictly speaking, door (singular).

Farmleigh House, Phoenix Park

Farmleigh gets a starring role in Chapter 23 of my first 'Moss Reid' mystery, Another Case in Cowtown. Here's how the chapter opens...

The sounds of the Luas Red Line

The Luas - Dublin's light rail or tram system - is only a decade old, yet it is now deeply embedded in the life of the city centre.

It features in all of my crime novels so far. The "network" (I use the term very loosely) currently has two disconnected lines, reflecting the disconnected thinking at the time they were planned and built.

Where is Stoneybatter in Dublin?

Stoneybatter is the centre of Moss Reid's universe in my series of crime novels about the foodie PI. But where exactly is Stoneybatter (aka Cowtown or Oxmantown)?

The Ha'penny Bridge and the lovelocks

Everyone calls it the Ha'penny Bridge, don't they? Even though its official name is the Liffey Bridge, and its original name was the Wellington Bridge (after the Duke).

A Google Map of places in 'Another Case...'

The first book in the 'Moss Reid' series, Another Case in Cowtown, is pretty much a “Stoneybatter novel”. I've compiled a map on Google Maps of some of the real-life places in this part of Dublin mentioned during the story.

Book #1: ‘Another Case in Cowtown’

Dublin, Ireland, summer 2013.

It’s the middle of a heatwave, and things are hotting up for Moss Reid.

He’s the kind of downscale private eye who likes to have the right priorities in life: eat, drink and investigate – in that order.

But the Stoneybatter sleuth has way too much on his plate this month: an adoption trace, a missing person, a couple of cheating spouses, a series of thefts at a top Dublin restaurant, and someone has nicked his laptop.

So what’s he doing sitting in an interrogation room, in an itchy boilersuit, being grilled (and boiled and finely diced) by the Murder Squad?