Award-winning author Mark O’Connell will discuss writing true crime and his latest book, A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder (Penguin Random House, 2023), at Boston College on September 13. The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place at 5 p.m. It is sponsored by BC’s Irish Studies Program and will be held in Connolly House at 300 Hammond St. For A Thread of Violence, O’Connell spent countless hours in conversation with Malcolm Macarthur—a well-known Dublin socialite who, when faced with financial ruin, decided to commit bank robbery. But Macarthur’s plan spun out of control, and he killed two innocent civilians. The ensuing manhunt, arrest, and conviction amounted to one of the most infamous political scandals in modern Irish history. O’Connell is the author of Notes from an Apocalypse and To Be a Machine, which was awarded the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, and was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. He is a contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Guardian.