A terrifying real life crash inspired this chilling Irish rural noir

When Michelle McDonagh's husband disappeared after a devastating motorway crash, the agonizing wait to discover whether he was alive left an enduring mark that would eventually inspire her latest novel "If These Walls Could Talk". Drawing on that traumatic experience and the unsettling history of Ireland's psychiatric institutions, McDonagh has crafted a suspenseful West of Ireland mystery where buried secrets and abandoned places collide.

One of the most common questions I get asked as an author is "where do you get your ideas from?" And the answer is from all kinds of places. Real life, the world around us, childhood memories, the stories people tell me, news reports, court cases, the list goes on. The real challenge is taking that germ of an idea and turning it into an 90,000-plus-word novel. 

The idea for my new book "If These Walls Could Talk" came from a personal experience that occurred fourteen years ago when my husband, Greg, was involved in a serious road traffic accident one wet, wintry night on the motorway between Cashel and Dublin. Just like my protagonist Hazel, I was on the other end of the phone when he crashed. And just like her, I heard the screech of brakes, and a loud bang. My husband screamed my name a few times and then silence.

I called 999 straight away but as I had no idea of his exact location, and unknown to me, his jeep had left the road, landing on its side in a field somewhere in Kildare, the Gardai [police] had no idea where he was. Meanwhile, I was at home panicking, with a baby and a toddler asleep in bed, faced with having to ring his parents who were abroad not knowing if he was dead or alive, to tell them what had happened. 

It was almost 30 minutes before Greg was able to make his way through brambles and hedgerow back to the motorway, flag down a passing taxi driver, who had no credit on his phone (I’m not making this up) and get to a service station so he could call me and tell me that not only was he alive, but had miraculously escaped without even a scratch. This despite the fact that his jeep was written off and the boxes of wine glasses he had been bringing from an event were all smashed to smithereens.

I’ll never forget that night and have often thought "what if" my husband had sustained a serious injury and hadn’t been found until the next day. It has left me with dreadful anxiety any time any of my family are on the road and I can’t contact them, but also with an idea for a book that has been knocking around the back of my mind ever since.

As a crime writer, my mind invariably gravitates towards the darkest of scenarios and I wondered what if my main character’s husband crashes his jeep while she’s on the phone to him and his car is found the next day, but he appears to have vanished off the face of the earth? I really enjoyed plotting what could have happened to Hazel’s husband, Darragh, in "If These Walls Could Talk" and dismantling his carefully-built lifestyle in his absence, revealing the secrets he’d been keeping, personal and financial, that put his family’s safety and future at risk. I must stress that apart from the accident, my husband is thankfully, nothing like Darragh (although I wouldn’t mind the Galway mansion and the Dublin penthouse).

My new book brings us back to the fictional east Galway town of Glenbeg, the scene of my debut novel "There’s Something I Have To Tell You" (2023), which is loosely based on Ballinasloe. Some of my happiest childhood memories are from the times I spent with my maternal grandparents in their cosy little house in the heart of the Square in Ballinasloe where, even as a child, I was aware of St. Brigid’s, the hulking psychiatric hospital on the edge of the town, and of the stigma that surrounded it.

The St. Brendan’s asylum in my new book is inspired by St. Brigid’s, which has been allowed to fall into dereliction since it closed in 2013, and by the shocking photos and videos of the building posted online by the urbex (urban explorer) community in recent years. I printed out many of these photos and papered the wall beside my desk with them for inspiration as I wrote. 

 One of the largest mental hospitals in Europe, at one point in the 1950’s St Brigid’s had a population of about 2,000 inpatients, when the entire town only had a population of just over 5,500. Despite these incredible numbers, Professor Brendan Kelly in his book "Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland", says there’s strong evidence to show that Ireland did not deserve the dubious accolade "the Mad Irish" as at no stage did we have more new patients per capita than any other country. What caused the patient population to grow was the dependency of society on the industry of the hospitals, he explains. And the fact that while we had a normal amount of patients getting into these places, we had very few getting out.

Through most of the 19th century, medical opinion wasn’t required for committal and many patients – some of whom weren’t even mentally ill, just unwanted by their families for various reasons from epilepsy and pregnancy outside marriage to refusing to marry a farmer 30 years older or because your nephew wanted your land – were trapped in these places for years, some for decades, because their families refused to take them back.

While my research into the history of our psychiatric institutions brought me to some pretty dark places, I also learnt that for some unfortunate people, abandoned by their own families, these places were the only home they knew.

Taut, unsettling, rich with suspense, "If These Walls Could Talk" is a gripping West of Ireland thriller about deception, obsession and the haunting truths we hide – even from those closet to us.

"If These Walls Could Talk" by Michelle McDonagh is out now and available in all good book shops and online at Amazon.

Michelle also co-hosts the Irish books podcast "Natter with Kate and Michelle with writer Kate Durrant", in association with Irish Central and Bookstation Ireland.