Michael Scanlon Books In Order

Publication Order of Detective Finnegan Beck Books

Michael Scanlon is a mystery fiction novelist who is best known for the “Detective Finnegan Beck” series of novels.

Unlike many authors, he never loved anything to do with education and he quit schooling aged 16 without any qualification.

Later in life, he always felt that he missed out and in 1999, he went to the Maynooth-based University of Ireland where he got his bachelor’s degree in Sociology and History.

He would then pursue further studies as he attended the Dublin-based Trinity College for his Creative Writing M.Phil. He took this as a validation of his prowess as a writer and this banished the chronic self-doubt that he had been harboring for many years.
Michael Scnalon published “Where She Lies,” her debut novel and the first of the “Detective Finnegan Beck” series of novels in 2019. He now has at least three novels to his name.

Since he never completed his formal education and quit school at 16, he would become a wanderer who held more than 40 jobs in his life.

After leaving home as a sixteen-year-old, he moved to Europe, and for a year, he hitchhiked across the continent. At seventeen, he found himself a penniless teenager in Paris.
For a time, Michael Scnalon was homeless until he managed to hide on a ship and stowed away back to Ireland. As a homeless youth in Dublin, he began to find all manner of jobs to survive.
He would ultimately head back home but never told his parents of his ordeals.

During his wandering days, he worked all manner of jobs that were just too many to count.

He worked as a barman, night porter, potato picker, waiter, blackjack dealer, market trader, soldier, station foreman, newspaper reporter, cleaner, nurse’s assistant, shop assistant and lastly he spent thirteen years with the Irish police as a civil servant.
Just when he thought, he would never make anything of himself, he finally met and married Eileen his wife. Together, they have a very beautiful daughter that he credits for curing his wanderlust and restlessness.

An interesting thing about Scanlon is that even with all his wanderings and lack of interest in education in his teenage years, he was always interested in novellas, short stories, and books.
He has always been writing all manner of manuscripts most of which have never been published. Still, Michael Scanlon published several of her short stories in magazines, newspapers, and anthologies, even though all he ever wanted was to get a long-form work of fiction published.

He had once sent one of his best manuscripts to a leading publisher in Ireland and had the response the following week.

He suspects that the editors never even bothered to read his manuscript but he persevered until, after so many false starts, he finally got his chance with Bookouture. Nonetheless, he still believes himself lucky to get his novels published.
Now a full-time author, he loves to park his car up some lonely road in town or sometimes by the seaside after which he spends several hours writing on his computer with a flask of coffee beside him.

Michael Scanlon’s novel “Where She Lies” opens with an investigation into the heinous killing of a teenage schoolgirl. The investigation soon becomes the hunt for the killer who it is suspected may have been killing unnoticed for many years.
Detective Finnegan Beck who is the best investigator in Dublin has just been demoted and sent to Galway where he was certain he would die of boredom, only for the discovery of the body to change everything.

The main suspect is a local youth that reported the body but Finn believes the kid has nothing to do with it. Beck has a penchant for heavy drinking and often has horrible nightmares and his personal life is a mess.

He teams up with Claire, a younger female detective, and their investigations soon unearth a series of dark secrets.

Things turn even more interesting when there are more bodies discovered and Beck thinks that for the small backwater town, three bodies a week seems excessive.
While he has to deal with constant reprimands and hindrances from his bosses, he continues his investigations in his own maverick style.

He comes to learn of some heinous criminal and personal secrets that the seemingly respectable citizens are hiding.

“The Child Before” by Michael Scanlon is another brilliant murder mystery in the Detective Finnegan Beck series of novels.

The novel is set on a cold morning when a cyclist stumbled upon the body of a woman brutally murdered in her vehicle. The vehicle had been abandoned on a remote path that leads to Kelly’s Forge, a long abandoned Irish village.
Detective Finnegan Beck is called in to investigate and upon arriving, discovers that in the back of the vehicle is a baby car seat, and in the footwell a a bottle of baby’s milk but no child.

This is not the first child to disappear from the village as five decades earlier another female child had gone missing and had never been found. Could there be a link between the two crimes or has too much time passed?
Beck’s heart is in the Irish capital Dublin as he is not interested in staying in Cross Beg since the woman he loves is waiting back there. Nonetheless, the fact that the current investigation involves a child convinces him to stay.
He needs to find the kid since if he does not, he fears that no one will try to do so given the previous record.

Michael Scanlon’s novel “Her Last Goodnight” is an interesting detective mystery fiction work.

When an elderly and very affable man named Eddie Kavanagh is found brutally murdered, everyone in Cross Beg and the surrounding areas is at a loss as to who would kill a harmless old man and for what reason.

Detective Finn Beck is called in to investigate what is his most difficult and puzzling case yet. But he understands why the residents are baffled as there is hardly anyone with a bad word to say about the well-liked, popular, and respected old man.
Things get even more complicated by the fact that the old man had an engagement ring on him and was impeccably dressed at the time of his murder.

What is very strange is that no one had ever seen him with a woman. Things become even more bizarre when several other residents are targeted.