Patricia Gibney

Patricia Gibney is an Irish author of crime fiction who sold 100,000 copies of her first crime thriller as an e-book, and had total sales exceeding 500,000 copies in 2018. By 2019, total book sales had passed one million.

Early life
Gibney is from Mullingar, County Westmeath and has lived there all her life. She spent 30 years working with Westmeath County Council.

Writing career
When her husband died in 2009, aged 49, three months after a diagnosis of cancer, Gibney turned to art and writing, self-publishing a children's book entitled Spring Sprong Sally. Gibney then started writing crime fiction and created her first novel in that genre. She worked with the Irish Writers Centre to improve her writing. Eventually she began a second novel and through that acquired an agent and a publishing contract with Bookouture, which has since been bought by Hachette Publishing.

Lottie Parker detective novels
Gibney's thirteen novels to date feature a main character, Detective Inspector Lottie Parker. The novels are set in the fictional Irish town of Ragmullin, which is an anagram of the real-life town of Mullingar, where Gibney lives.