56 Days

Winner of the An Post Irish Book Awards 2021 Crime Fiction Book of the Year

A Book of the Year for 2021 in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Irish Times



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** THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER **





'As good as suspense fiction gets' Washington Post





No one even knew they were together. Now one of them is dead.

56 DAYS AGO



Ciara and Oliver meet in a supermarket queue in Dublin and start dating the same week COVID-19 reaches Irish shores.

35 DAYS AGO



When lockdown threatens to keep them apart, Oliver suggests they move in together. Ciara sees a unique opportunity for a relationship to flourish without the scrutiny of family and friends. Oliver sees a chance to hide who - and what - he really is.

TODAY



Detectives arrive at Oliver's apartment to discover a decomposing body inside.



Can they determine what really happened, or has lockdown created an opportunity for someone to commit the perfect crime?

'Terrific ... you won't want to stop reading until the end' Karin Slaughter



Catherine Ryan Howard is the bestselling author of The Nothing Man, which shot straight to the top of the Irish bestseller charts on publication and was a Kindle No. 1 bestseller in the UK. Her work has been shortlisted for the CWA/John Creasey New Blood Dagger, the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best Novel, and for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year several times. Her third novel, Rewind, is currently being developed for television. She lives in Dublin.



56 Days is a terrific novel written by an author who is certain to become a distinguished voice in crime fiction. You won't want to stop reading until the very end.



This book is splendid. The lockdown thriller you DO want to read.



Brilliantly creepy ... wonderfully atmospheric and paranoid



Timely, surprising, emotionally alive, this is about as good as suspense fiction gets



A twisty tale of suspense ... kept me guessing as I turned the pages at a furious clip



This is SO GOOD. The plot genuinely kept surprising me, but it also engaged on an emotional level.



56 Days? I read it in 24 HOURS because it was so compulsive, intriguing and fantastically entertaining. I could not let it go.



I was surgically attached to this twisting lockdown thriller. Clever, tender and all too convincing, it's the kind of book you read in one breathless sitting to get to the truth, and then again, slowly, to see how the author did it.



Dark and dazzling, funny, sinister, and oh-so clever. I read 56 Days in a breath held right up until the final, mesmeric pages. Catherine Ryan Howard is ridiculously talented.



Addictive and very smart



A terrific, chilling premise, elevated by the plot's sophisticated architecture ... a first-rate thriller



Catherine Ryan Howard has become my go-to writer for utterly absorbing, original stories with a killer twist and 56 Days delivers all this and more. If you read one thriller that captures the start of lockdown in all its surreal and terrifying uncertainty, let it be this. Just remember to breathe!



Absolutely faultless ... 56 Days is crime-writing perfection and Catherine Ryan Howard is a seriously talented writer



An absolute belter from the high priestess of high concepts. Claustrophobic, thrilling and fiendishly clever in both its structure and its twists.



What a fantastic book. Loved it and highly recommend.



Magnificent. A high-concept thriller executed with panache and heaps of emotion.



Catherine Ryan Howard takes on one of the most disturbing types of crime we know about and treats it with both intelligence and sensitivity.



The lockdown thriller you didn't know you needed. An utterly brilliant and completely satisfying pageturner



Written and plotted so well and left me guessing up to the end. Brilliant!



The tension builds and builds. Don't think you've figured it all out - there's a shocking final twist.



A tense, edgy and compulsive read - 56 Days is brilliantly plotted, darkly humorous and utterly unexpected. This is Lockdown, but not as you know it.



Don't want to read a lockdown novel? Neither did I. Then I read 56 Days and changed my mind. Absolutely brilliant!



Mind-blowingly brilliant



Howard is brilliant at creating high-concept crime plots with killer twists ...The plot is riveting, the writing seamless and the characters very convincing ... the perfect - despite the pandemic setting - escapist novel



Ryan Howard's plotting is second to none. The novel also has the virtue of precise, vivid and efficiently delivered prose - Ryan Howard writes with an economy of style that brings to mind the work of Lee Child ... highly recommended



Staggeringly accomplished ... its sustained emotional power raises it to the first rank



A very fine work of crime fiction ... deserves to be savored



Fantastic ... the structure is superb



Ryan Howard's skilful plotting continually wrongfoots the reader as twist follows twist until the totally surprising and genuinely shocking truth is revealed ... a terrific read



A timely, twisted thriller



A bravura piece of storytelling ... immediate and timely