Author and Press Quotes

"The best first novel I've read in years. It crackles. It grips you by the throat. It's a flat-out terror trip. This is some guy to watch out for in a dark alley." - James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential, The Black Dahlia, American Tabloid)

"Not only one of the finest thriller debuts of the last ten years, but also one of the best Irish novels, in any genre, of recent times. It grips from the first page to the last, and heralds the arrival of a major new voice in Irish writing. I don't know how Stuart Neville is going to improve upon such an exceptional first novel, but I can't wait to find out..." - John Connolly (The Unquiet, The Reapers, The Book of Lost Things)

"The Twelve is the book when the world finally sits up and goes WOW, the Irish really have taken over the world of crime writing. Stuart Neville is Ireland's answer to Henning Mankell." - Ken Bruen (American Skin, London Boulevard, The Guards)

"An astonishing debut. Brilliantly conceived, masterfully written, Stuart Neville's THE TWELVE is both a heart-pounding thriller and a stunning examination of responsibility and revenge. He is going to be a major new voice in suspense fiction." - Jeff Abbott (Panic, Fear, Trust Me)

"As thought-provoking a book on the aftermath of conflict as you'll ever read. Neville's book is a thrilling record of the traces of crime and blood left behind when the politicians command us to move on." - Matt Beynon Rees (the Omar Yussef mysteries)

"Both a fine novel and a gripping thriller: truly this is a magnificent debut." - Ruth Dudley Edwards (The Faithful Tribe, Carnage on the Committee)

"Stuart Neville goes to the heart of the perversity of paramilitarism." - Sean O'Callaghan (The Informer)

"One of the crime novels of the year in 2009 will be Stuart Neville's stunning debut, The Twelve (Harvill Secker, £12.99), which is, I think, the best mystery to have emerged so far from the aftermath of the Troubles. I read it in a single sitting, and it marks a major step forward for the genre in this country." - John Connolly, Irish Times, 29/11/08

"And there's northerner Stuart Neville, whose Belfast thriller The Twelve has been earmarked as the Next Big Thing and the start of a whole new genre, Norn Noir." - Arminta Wallace, Irish Times, 03/01/2009

"Just as hotly tipped is debutant Stuart Neville, whose The Twelve is being hailed as the first great post-Troubles novel about Northern Ireland." - Declan Burke, Sunday Independent, 11/01/2009