The girl who stole my book: How Eilis O'Hanlon found out her crime novels were swiped by a stranger

There was something strangely familiar about the crime novel riding high on the Amazon Kindle bestseller lists last autumn. Eilis O'Hanlon ought to know. She'd co-written it almost 13 years earlier. The only problem was that someone else was now claiming to be the author.

Eilish O'Hanlon felt violated when her hard graft was taken be another writer. Photo: Kip Caroll.

Eilis O'Hanlon

Last October, I logged on to Twitter to find that I was now being followed by an account with the username @DonnaPatel. Something made me click on this particular link to see who it was. Call it intuition.

Donna Patel described herself as an "aspie" and "Potterhead", and her most recent interaction had been with an Irish author calling herself "Joanne Clancy".