Jo Spain’s crime thrillers are Irish best sellers. Her quietly charismatic lead detective Tom Reynolds is called upon to explore dark secrets of Ireland’s past - secrets that still haunt life in the green isle today.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Jo talks about why she loves writing crime and which actor she’d pick to play Tom in an upcoming TV series.

Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

Why Jo "counts minutes like other women count calories"

The secret to best selling crime

The actor she'd like to play Tom Reynolds

The challenge of "Why Dunnits"

The writers she admires most

And the one thing she did that brought success

Where to find Jo Spain: 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JoSpainAuthor/

 Twitter  @SpainJoanne

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

Jenny: And now, here's Jo. Hello there Jo and welcome to the show, its great to have you with us.

Jo: Hi Jenny, thanks for inviting me on.

Jenny: Beginning at the beginning . . . .Was there a "Once Upon A Time" moment when you realised you had to write fiction or your life would somehow be incomplete? Was there a catalyst?

Jo Spain, author.

Jo: Yes, there certainly was a catalyst. I've read my entire life, so I've always enjoyed novels and I never thought that writing one was something that ordinary people did.

I was working in a job in the Irish Parliament, and my job involved writing all the time; but writing speeches and legislation, bills, things like that.

And there was a moment when I was going back to work after taking maternity leave following the birth of one of my children where I thought to myself "I spend all day every day writing, but it's not the kind of writing I like to do, in an ideal scenario and a dream job.

I've loved crime fiction since I was very small, and reading it and watching it on TV. I definitely just thought "I'm going to give this is a go and write something I enjoy writing". It all kicked off from there.

Jenny: Fantastic: You’ve so far published three books with Detective Tom Reynolds in the role of lead investigator, with a fourth in the series due out later this year.  They are all very much bedded in Irish social history and the first, With Our Blessing, tackled the controversial way the Catholic church handled the so-called Magdalene Laundries in the 60s and 70’s  . . .with brutal treatment of young unmarried women who went to them seeking help in pregnancy  . .. Can you tell us a bit about the “set up” for that book?  It had personal connection for you I understand,

With Our Blessing, Jo Spain

Jo: I always knew I was going to write books that had some kind of social or cultural background, because I'm very interested in current affairs and history, - and giving books a little more depth.

At the time in Ireland, the Magdalene Laundries and Mother & Baby  homes were really making the headlines. The Irish Prime Minister, the Taoiseach, had apologised to women who'd been through the system, and there was an awful lot being unveiled.

So I thought this would make a very interesting back drop to my first novel. I was in the middle of researching that and it dawned on me - my father who passed away in 1995 had been adopted.

He'd never known where he was adopted from or anything, he had a very strong sense of why he'd been adopted- his mother couldn't manage him and didn't want him. He really had a chip on his shoulder about it.

But I was putting the dates together with the research I was doing, and it occurred to me he'd been born in the 1950s in Ireland. There was no way he hadn't come through this system.

I rang up the health department here and being adopted, one of the notorious secrets is that you have no rights to any information. And that's worse again, when you're the grandchild of a woman who's given away her baby.