Bartholomew Gill
Bartholomew Gill is the pseudonym of Mark McGarrity, an Irish-American author known for his crime novels featuring the character Peter McGarr, a detective superintendent in Dublin. Born on July 22, 1943, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, Gill was raised in a culturally rich Irish heritage and pursued higher education at Brown University and Trinity College in Dublin, where he focused on the works of Samuel Beckett for his master's thesis. His writing career began in the 1970s, and he became celebrated for his seventeen McGarr novels, starting with "McGarr and the Politician's Wife" in 1977, which were later retitled in the series format "The Death of...". His work is noted for its linguistic dexterity and authentic representation of Dublin's atmosphere, contributing significantly to the crime fiction genre. In addition to his series, Gill authored three standalone novels and worked as a features writer for the Newark Star-Ledger. Tragically, he passed away on July 4, 2002, in an accident that mirrored the plots of his own mysteries, just prior to the publication of his last book, "The Death of an Irish Tradition." His legacy continues through his impactful contributions to literature and journalism.
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Bartholomew Gill
Author
- Born: July 22, 1943
- Birthplace: Holyoke, Massachusetts
- Died: July 4, 2002
- Place of death: Morristown, New Jersey
Biography
Bartholomew Gill (a name borrowed from his maternal grandfather) is the pseudonym of Mark McGarrity, born of Irish heritage on July 22, 1943, in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where he was raised with his brother George. Gill graduated from Brown University, and later earned a M.A. from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where his thesis concerned the language and narrative voice of Samuel Beckett. After graduating from Trinity, he lived briefly in Siena, Italy.
To support himself and his family—he was married to and later divorced from Margaret Dull, who bore a daughter, Madeline—Gill held a wide variety of jobs, including owning and operating a restaurant/bar in Niles, Ohio, that catered to steelworkers and autoworkers. In the 1970’s, he began focusing on journalism and fiction writing while dividing his time between residences in Dublin, Ireland, and Cranberry Lake or Morristown, New Jersey.
Gill’s first novel, McGarr and the Politician’s Wife (1977), introduced the series character for which is best known: Peter McGarr, the crusty, idiosyncratic detective superintendent of the Dublin Police. (Early novels were all entitled “McGarr and the. . . “ but were later retitled to conform with most of the later entries in the series, as “The Death of. . . “) Seventeen McGarr novels were written under the Bartholomew Gill pseudonym between the first and last books in the series. The Death of a Joyce Scholar (1989) was nominated for an Edgar award, and readers praised the novels for their use of language, their feel for the nuances of Irish speech, and their ability to capture the essence of the city of Dublin, which served more as a character than as a setting throughout the series. Several of the McGarr novels were optioned to film companies.
Gill, who also produced three nonseries crime-oriented novels under his real name—A Passing Adventure (1980), Neon Caesar (1989), and White Rush/Green Fire (1991)—joined the Newark Star-Ledger in 1996 as a features writer, and he maintained an outdoor column there from 2000 until his death on July 4, 2002, just weeks before his fifty-ninth birthday. The circumstances of Gill’s death, at first glance, seemed like something from the plot of one of his McGarr murder mysteries—he was found dead outside his second-floor apartment in Morristown, New Jersey. Local police later pieced together a plausible scenario: Gill had apparently locked himself out of his home, attempted to gain access through a window, and perished in a fall from an outside stairway. His untimely passing made the title of his final fictional work, The Death of an Irish Tradition, seem all the more poignant.