The day has arrived and The Castle is available to buy (The Castle: The Sean Rooney Psychosleuth series: Amazon.co.uk: Tom O. Keenan: 9780857162427: Books .) It's like your child going off into the world. You've created it, gave it life, now it has to go its own way. I wish it well. I can do no more for it other than proclaim its merits to the world. It's a fantastic book (I think!) which will be enjoyed by many.

The Castle is the prequel to The Father the first in my Sean Rooney Psychosleuth Series . The Family and The Son develop the character of psychosleuth Sean Rooney, taking you on a journey where plots are thick, pursuits are torturous and the payoffs terrifying. This is the prequel to The Father, the first in the series, which was shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger. If you love Tartan noir and hardboiled crime these books are for you.

'Excellent dark, disturbing and very compelling, with a hard literary edge that serves the tale and the characters within extremely well.’ LIZ WILKINS, LIZ LOVES BOOKS ‘… Rooney is the sort of person who would cut off his face to spite his nose and makes Tony Black’s Gus Dury look like Dr Phil.’ PAUL D. BRAZIL ‘A powerful, well written story that doesn’t shy away from difficult issues. From a talented writer.’ CRIME FICTION LOVER ‘Keenan takes the reader down some ill-trod pathways. This is as far from formulaic crime as it's possible to get.’ CAFE THINKING Prior to his pursuit of ‘the Father’, Sean Rooney, psychologist and erstwhile psychosleuth, spent nine formative months as a trainee in The Castle, aka Hillwood Mental Hospital.

In The Castle, long-term patients are mysteriously killing themselves. Sean Rooney, trainee psychologist, forms a self-help patient group to investigate the mysterious deaths. The Castle has many secrets, some going back over a hundred years. Rooney has a particular reason for choosing The Castle as his placement, posing a question: is he there to meet his own needs or that of the patients? The Hospital Management Team consider suicide in large mental hospitals as coming ‘with the turf’. Rooney doesn’t agree and after ‘going undercover’, believes there is more to these suicides. All have a common feature: after many years in hospital, these patients were all considered for ‘care in the community’. The Castle doesn’t give up its secrets easily, whether historical, criminal, or supernatural. It takes a group of like-minded patients – a psychotic scientist, depressed philosopher, delusional vigilante, dope-head crime writer, autistic arsonist, wannabe detective, and a bipolar psychologist to find out who or what is killing patients at The Castle.