Jane Casey

@janecasey.bsky.social

14832 Followers 1148 Following

Author from Ireland. Responsible for the Maeve Kerrigan series and Everything She Didn't Say (out 16 July). Also owner of the world’s least cooperative spaniel.

A grinning spaniel covered in leaf fragments from nose to tail. Caption reads: 'Please find attached 100,000 dead leaves'
A dog frolicking in dry yellow grass, blue skies overhead, a line of green trees in the distance
A spaniel on a grey sofa, ever vigilant, after a night of constant barking. His thoughts: you want me on that wall -- you need me on that wall. We use words like "honor," "code," "loyalty." We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather that you just said "thank you" and went on your way.
The bestseller list from the Irish Times today.
Me and John Banville sharing a moment on a panel in Dublin. We are sitting behind a coffee table holding copies of our books. It is not today or yesterday, but my memory of it is sharp.
A writer signs a book while talking and is contorting her left hand in a way that looks weird but is normal for me.
Everything She Didn't Say Bestseller Casey's latest standalone is her first book set in her native Ireland. In a remote cottage on the Mayo Victim, witness or killer? coast, a woman wakes to find her female companion has disappeared. Both the house and her clothes are covered in blood, and she claims to have no idea what has happened - but the locals swear that they only ever saw one woman, not two. Detectives Ben Butler and Liam Farrell - an engaging pair who are worth a series of their own - are sent from Dublin to investigate. They discover that a lot of things don't add up, that the key to the mystery may lie in the past, and that there may be more than one person missing. Casey not only makes great use of the west of Ireland setting, but provides us with a mazy plot, wrongfooting and surprising us at every turn.
A man paints a window with a version of a book cover.
A painting of a craggy man in an inexplicable outfit (red cravat, fur? coat) with an obvious wig. He looks goood for 65. He is hypnotised by the lamp that fills the foreground. A blonde watches him, eyes ringed with black, dress virginal and white. In the background a man with a hangover sports the second best wig. It is all profoundly baffling but sex-ay.
A wit-free spaniel beams adoringly at the camera, an octopus toy by his paw. The octopus toy has a higher IQ.
A series of screenshots as a woman with comic bad hair (deliberate) fails to record a single line of dialogue a thousand times (accidental)
40% off on HarperCollins.co.uk use code: CASEY40 (Book cover of Everything She Didn’t Say) Valid until midnight 31 July 2026
absolute loathing, my mood murderous. If only I had been doing this surveillance with Chris Pettifer, who wouldn't have minded how I looked, or Liv. We could have made a wonderful and believable couple, and I wouldn't have needed to put on eyeliner. But no, it had to be Josh Derwent with his neanderthal attitude to women and his 'high standards'. The kitchen was empty but I heard a splash from outside and went to the back door to discover a large inflatable pool had erupted in the garden, a sort of supersized paddling pool. The garden hose was draped over the edge to fill it. Also in the pool: Pippin, who was splashing around happily, Derwent in nothing but a pair of shorts, and approximately ten thousand dead insects. Georgia would have dived straight in, I thought, but I was not in the mood for the tiny corpses, not to mention the six feet of rippling muscle, especially when it was wrapped around such an infuriating personality. ‘What’s going on here?' 'I thought the dog would like it.’ ‘The dog,’ I repeated, kicking off my sandals and stepping into the water. 'Christ, that's freezing? "You get used to it.’ I eyed him. ‘I suppose it helps that more of you is out of the water than actually in it.’ ‘The problem is that if it's full enough for me to be submerged, Pippin has to swim, and he gets tired.’ "Tired is good.’ ‘Drowned is bad,’ Derwent said severely. He slid down another inch or two, which meant that he was essentially lying flat and taking up the entire pool, which I pointed out. 'My pool. I bought it. I blew it up.’ "For the dog.’ "Yeah, obviously.’ I nodded, then scuffed some water at him, getting him right in the face. He surged up faster than I had anticipated, grabbed me by the waist and pulled me down into the pool
A demoralised spaniel regrets my life choices. Ears? Down. Nose? Long. Heart? Broken. He’s lying on a sofa with a fan blowing his hair; don’t feel too sorry for him.
A spaniel in a see-through cone inhales some brambles
A spaniel who knows the game is up cosplays a flower in a big blue ruff, while sitting in a vet’s office preparing to cost hundreds of pounds.
A blond spaniel waits for death on a blanket on a bed. His sore paw is extended in front of him. A tragedy.
Portrait of ‘A Spanish Gentleman’ by Velasquez. A thin, black-clad man occupies the centre of a drab canvas. His eyes are fixed on the viewer. They are dark, intelligent and full of life. He has short, slightly untidy hair and a magnificent goatee beard with a curling moustache. He looks as if he has seen life at its best and worst.
A stunningly beautiful book perched on cliffs with the sea behind. It has red edges.
A small boy in a workhouse - Oliver Twist - holds an empty bowl and asks for less.
James Ellroy does not own a computer, his publicist explains, so will a phone interview be OK? When the self-proclaimed “mad dog of American crime fiction” picks up his landline at the appointed hour, it transpires that he has never owned a mobile phone either. Nor sent an email. Nor figured out how to turn on his ex-wife Helen Knode’s TV set. “Everything is very complex and it’s satanic to me, the dependency that people have on computers,” Ellroy, 78, says cheerfully in a bass baritone drawl from his pad in Denver, Colorado. “I don’t engage in internet chat and I understand there’s all this crazy shit on the internet and people with the most outlandish beliefs on God’s green Earth.” If his agent or publisher want to get in touch, Helen – who lives in a separate apartment – prints out the email, hands it to Ellroy, and the author of LA Confidential and The Black Dahlia dictates a response. “I got a big, big drawer over here with printed-out emails,” he reports.
A spaniel takes refuge in sleeping on my bed with a faded pig toy between him and the world.
A sleek tabby lounges on a quarter inch of trellis in the morning sunshine
A paperback book called The Outsider on a yellow background.
A would-be feral cat contemplates his lack of freedom from inside a carrier, after a week on the loose.
A still from a video of a woman holding a book like she’d never seen one before, looking scared, during the longest 34 seconds of her life.
Temperatures range from 19 at 5am to 27 at 10.
A woman in a white t-shirt is as baffled as you can possibly imagine: truly stumped. A picture of bemusement. In the background there are plants and a painting.
Dr Jack Abbott, the Pitt's resident thrill-seeker silver fox.
A morose spaniel who had to have a bath recovering on a bed, under a blanket. Sadness in his eyes etc.
A dog (who is refusing to contemplate a morning walk) snoozes tactically on his owner. His magnificent hair has a stray curl on top like a cartoon baby.
I was so tired that my sexual fantasy had become a scenario in which a faceless man tenderly said, "You're exhausted, aren't you? I think what you need is to head to bed for twenty-four hours straight." Midway through, he would wake me with a bowl of buttered noodles, demand to see me house the entire thing, and then tell me to close my eyes again.
Author + some of her books arranged beautifully.
A narrow passage filled with idiosyncratic treasure
A cat aura farms against a blue sky wearing a sleek tracker curved to fit his neck. It will cost a million pounds and he will lose it in four months.
A cat with his tongue out, plotting to acquire a new and less bulky tracker.
A cheetah on safari, I presume underwhelmed to see yet more humans doing human stuff. Golden hour light, South Africa in the background.
A well covered spaniel - not to say plump - explores an actual literal glade on a dog walk that was very successful until we met the two evil pugs from down the road and canine insults were loudly exchanged. They started it.
A very expensive kitchen with a vast kitchen island. One wall has an installation that reads 'Love you Long Time'. No one in this family has ever watched Full Metal Jacket.
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author Rainbow Rowell Cherry Baby
A woman in a Breton top (because she is middle aged), also wearing a cry-for-help over-sized writing cardigan, baggy jeans and the Adidas trainers everyone and their mother wears. (Her hairdresser is on mat leave btw.)
Rainbow Rowell’s novel Cherry Baby
A close-up of Dame Barbara Cartland, an antique romance novelist wearing her trademark pink hat, dress, pearls and diamonds. Her eye make-up is robust, like her heroes. Her lipstick is unconfined, like her heroines' bosoms. Her hair is chaotic, like a haystack where two lovers have frolicked. If you asked what Barbie should look like these days, it would be this.
A most handsome tabby cat sticks his tongue out having forgotten what he was doing mid-wash. In the background a teenager’s bed is unmade: don’t judge me.
Spaniel, woods, shadows, new growth on spindly trees, good vibes.
A woman in a corset, in a black and white photograph dating from 1939
A model windmill (which moved!) with a small figure of a ?dead man lying at the foot of a ladder. (No other figures featured in the whole display.) Fatal fall? Poison? Hit in the head with a sail and staggered away to die? WHO CAN SAY. The windmill museum was quite detailed about windmills which I am only medium-interested in so this held my attention for a while.
A Caravaggio painting from 1602 of Jesus being embraced by Judas as men in armour arrest him. On the right, a dark haired onlooker takes it all in. On the left, a panicking apostle runs away. All is suffused with unearthly light and beauty despite depicting the moment of disaster. Once overlooked, now one of the world’s treasures.
One spaniel smiling, another looking very much as if he just told the world’s most basic dad joke.
Two spaniels sit on some grass. One is bright eyed and astute. The other is deeply bamboozled but his single brain cell is telling him he’s happy.