Peter Quinn

Peter Quinn is the author of several books, among them the acclaimed novel Banished Children of Eve. He previously served as a speechwriter for two New York governors. After years as the corporate editorial director for Time Warner, he is now a full time writer.

"HOUR OF THE CAT is the hour of Peter Quinn's genius. It's been said a million times but I'll say it again: 'I couldn't put it down.'" —Frank McCourt

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Cross Bronx: A Writing Life

In his inimitable prose, master storyteller Peter Quinn chronicles his odyssey from the Irish Catholic precincts of the Bronx to the arena of big-league politics and corporate hardball.

Cross Bronx is Peter Quinn’s one-of-a-kind account of his adventures as ad man, archivist, teacher, Wall Street messenger, court officer, political speechwriter, corporate scribe, and award-winning novelist. Like Pete Hamill, Quinn is a New Yorker through and through. His evolution from a childhood in a now-vanished Bronx, to his exploits in the halls of Albany and swish corporate offices, to then walking away from it all, is evocative and entertaining and enlightening from first page to last. Cross Bronx is bursting with witty, captivating stories.

Quinn is best known for his novels (all recently reissued by Fordham University Press under its New York ReLit imprint), most notably his American Book Award–winning novel Banished Children of Eve. Colum McCann has summed up Quinn’s trilogy of historical detective novels as “generous and agile and profound.” Quinn has now seized the time and inspiration afforded by “the strange interlude of the pandemic” to give his up-close-and-personal accounts of working as a speechwriter in political backrooms and corporate boardrooms.

From 1979 to 1985 Quinn worked as chief speechwriter for New York Governors Hugh Carey and Mario Cuomo, helping craft Cuomo’s landmark speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention and his address on religion and politics at Notre Dame University. Quinn then joined Time Inc. as chief speechwriter and retired as corporate editorial director for Time Warner at the end of 2007. As eyewitness and participant, he survived elections, mega-mergers, and urban ruin. In Cross Bronx he provides his insider’s view of high-powered politics and high-stakes corporate intrigue.

Incapable of writing a dull sentence, the award-winning author grabs our attention and keeps us enthralled from start to finish. Never have his skills as a storyteller been on better display than in this revealing, gripping memoir.

(Fordham University Press, September 2022)

Banished Children of Eve

The Civil War has just entered its third bloody year and the North is about to impose its first military draft, a decision that in New York City will spark the most devastating and destructive riot in American history. Peter Quinn, acclaimed author of Looking for Jimmy and Hour of the Cat, relates the events of this tumultuous time through the lives of people drawn from every part of the city's teeming streets: an opportunistic but likable Irish-American hustler, a scheming Yankee stockbroker, an immigrant serving girl, a beautiful mulatto actress, her white minstrel lover, and a cluster of historical figures from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton to Stephen Foster. The fates of these characters coalesce in the cataclysm of the Draft Riots, as Quinn magically brings to life a pivotal period in this country's history. In Banished Children of Eve, Quinn presents a lavishly praised novel of a great American city in crisis. 

"Vividly imagined...Nothing short of splendid." - The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Quinn's book...draws us into the minds and hearts and histories of as rich and varied an array of characters...as it will be your good fortune to encounter in any book." - The Irish Literary Supplement

(Fordham University Press, April 2021)

Looking For Jimmy: A Search for Irish America

In this stunning work chronicling the author’s exploration of his own past—and the lives of many hundreds of thousands of nameless immigrants who struggled alongside his own ancestors—Peter Quinn paints a brilliant new portrait of the Irish-American men and women whose evolving culture and values continue to play such a central role in all of our identities as Americans. In Quinn’s hands, the Irish stereotype of “Paddy” gives way to an image of “Jimmy”—an archetypal Irish-American. From Irish immigration to modern politics, Quinn vibrantly weaves together the story of a remarkable people and their immeasurable contribution to American history and culture.

(Fordham University Press, March 2022)

Hour of The Cat (Fintan Dunne Trilogy Book #1)

It’s just another murder, one of the hundreds of simple homicides in 1939: A spinster nurse is killed in her apartment; a suspect is caught with the murder weapon and convicted. Fintan Dunne, the P.I. lured onto the case and coerced by conscience into unraveling the complex setup that has put an innocent man on Death Row, will soon find that this is a murder with tentacles which stretch far beyond the crime scene . . . to Nazi Germany, in fact; following it to the end leads him into a murder conspiracy of a scope that defies imagination. The same clouds are rolling over Berlin, where plans for a military coup are forming among a cadre of Wehrmacht officers. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Military Intelligence, is gripped by a deadly paralysis: He is neither with the plotters nor against them. Joining them in treason would violate every value he holds as an officer. Betraying the plotters to the Gestapo Chief, Reinhard Heydrich, might just forsake the country’s last hope to avert utter destruction and centuries of shame. Heydrich is suspicious. With no limits to Hitler’s manic pursuit of territorial expansion, with crimes against the people candy-coated as racial purification, the “hour of the cat” looms when every German conscience must make a choice. When Canaris receives an order to assist in a sinister covert operation on foreign shores, his hour has come. Hour of the Cat is a stunning achievement: tautly suspenseful, hauntingly memorable, and brilliantly authentic.

(Fordham University Press, September 2021)

The Man Who Never Returned (Fintan Dunne Trilogy Book #2)

Judge Joe Crater’s disappearance in 1930 spawned countless conspiracy theories and captured the imagination of a nation caught in the grip of The Depression.

Fifteen years later, Fintan Dunne, the detective encountered in Quinn’s novel Hour of the Cat, recently retired and bored, answers a summons to New York where he is asked to solve the old case for a newspaper magnate only interested in making a profit from the story.

Peter Quinn once again has written a compelling blend of history and fiction that is simply unputdownable.

(Fordham University Press, February 2022)

Dry Bones (Fintan Dunne Trilogy Book #3)

Dry Bones, the third novel of the Fintan Dunne series by Peter Quinn, follows Fintan, who works for the OSS, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The novel is set during World War II, when Fintan teams up with several of his colleagues working to rescue several intelligence officers who had been fighting the Nazis inside Czechoslovakia. Things go awry and the team soon uncovers a huge conspiracy that may change the course of their careers and their lives. After the end of the war, many of his colleagues have bad things happen to them. The common thing about his friends who either go missing or end up dead is that they were trying to unearth the mystery of an infamous doctor who had gone missing. It seems the CIA is determined to ensure that what happened to the infamous doctor who had made his name experimenting on prisoners of war remained a secret.

(Fordham University Press, February 2022)