On September 8, 2026, JCU Professor of Composition and Creative Writing Aidan Fadden published his latest crime novel, Every Buried Secret (Bloodhound Books). This is Professor Fadden’s third crime novel. While his first two works, A Known Evil and A Cold Flame (Harper Collins, 2018), set in contemporary Italy, were written under the penname Aidan Conway, Every Buried Secret sees him writing as A.M. Fadden, as he returns to write about his native city of Birmingham, UK.
At the heart of the novel are the struggles of the female protagonist, Sinead Zaf, who, due to her mixed ethnic background, must battle institutional racism, as well as the everyday demands of an increasingly difficult job. Sinead is helped by Ardian Kadare, an Albanian detective on secondment, who must also deal with problems of his own.
The police novel is partly inspired by a real-life, unsolved cold case murder that occurred in the 80s close to where Fadden lived, in the unremarkable suburb of Hall Green, Birmingham. Despite a massive manhunt and a well-publicized media campaign, the murderer was never found.
Hall Green – once home to J.R.R. Tolkien – and the nearby boroughs of Sparkhill, Moseley, and Digbeth feature prominently in the novel, as Fadden writes not just a crime novel but also a homage to that part of the city he grew up in. The novel is a purely fictional, yet draws on real themes and issues spanning the 80s to the present day. The city’s multicultural heritage, the Birmingham-Asian and Birmingham-Irish communities in particular, form a rich backdrop for a storyline that encompasses the re-emergence of the far right, the dark shadow of Irish Republican terrorism, and police corruption and malpractice.
Professor Aidan Fadden has been teaching at John Cabot University since 2012. He was born in Birmingham, UK, to Irish parents. He holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Wales, Bangor, as well as an MA in Modern Literary Studies from Queen’s University of Belfast.
Professor Fadden’s poetry and short stories have been published widely in print journals and online. Writing as Aidan Conway, he has published two novels with Harper Collins in 2018: A Known Evil and A Cold Flame.
