Niall Leonard's Website

Back in 2016 I was hanging out in Vancouver, on the set of a certain movie – two movies, actually, being shot back-to-back – and feeling slightly surplus to requirements because it seemed my job as screenwriter was pretty much done. In fact I don’t even think I was on set when I got the call from the Props department.

You see, in these movies our heroine had just landed a job with a publishing firm, and in the slush-pile had discovered what she thought was a promising work – a political thriller based on Dante’s Inferno. The shooting script called for a short montage of her poring over the manuscript; the problem the Props department had was, there was no manuscript. They couldn’t just provide a sheaf of pages typed up with gibberish – the text would be shown on camera, in close-up. So, they asked, as the accredited writer on the movie, how would I feel about providing a few extracts from this work of alleged genius?

How could I say no? ‘Alleged genius’ […] Continue Reading…

OK, so this blog is WAY overdue an update. What can I say? I’ve been busy.

Today, July 13 2021, sees the release of ‘M, King’s Bodyguard,’ an historical thriller based on actual characters and events that I have been working on for over ten years, since I came across William Melville in a website article headed ‘Ten Amazing Irishmen You’ve Never Heard Of’. I am not the first to try and tell his story in fiction, but to the best of my knowledge I’m the first to get to publication.

William Melville left Ireland at fourteen, joined the London Metropolitan Police in 1872, and rose to become head of Special Branch and occasional bodyguard to British royals. In 1901, in the leadup to the funeral of Queen Victoria, he received a tipoff that a gang of European anarchists planned to attack the cortege and assassinate Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. With the Kaiser’s bodyguard Gustav Steinhauer in tow, Melville set out to see off the plotters – but nothing went according to plan…

Last time I […] Continue Reading…

Look at the state of this website! The Crusher trilogy is complete, and the home page still says Parts 2 and 3 ‘coming soon’? Bear with us – (Here imagine frantic sounds of sawing, hammering and cursing behind the scenery…)

Ladies and Gents, the third and final part of the Crusher trilogy, Shredder, is out this month, June 2014. The official launch is Thursday 3^rd July (which is next month, I know, shut up at the back) and to mark it I am going to raffle off three sets of the novels in the paperbacks with the cool matching covers, autographed of course (so you can’t send ’em back.) The draw will take place on Sunday 6 July and a link to the entry widget is on the front page of this website… or will be very shortly…  (Hoot! Let’s stink a link to the comp on the home page!) I will mail the signed sets to winners anywhere in the world.

What can I say about Shredder […] Continue Reading