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A superbly gripping and blackly funny mystery by the king of the comic crime caper. He's the Man With No Name and the owner of No Alibis, a mystery bookshop in Belfast. But when a detective agency next door goes bust, the agency's clients start calling into his shop asking him to solve their cases. It's not as if there's any danger involved. It's an easy way to sell books to his gullible customers and Alison, the beautiful girl in the jewellery shop across the road, will surely be impressed. Except she's not - because she can see the bigger picture. And when they break into the shuttered shop next door on a dare, they have their answer. Suddenly they're catapulted along a murder trail which leads them from small-time publishing to Nazi concentration camps and serial killers...

They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Well, as far as Dan Starkey's concerned, 'they' can stick it where the sun don't shine because right now helping his wife with the unpacking is the least of his worries...No sooner than Dan has moved into his new Belfast home, his best mate, Mouse, is murdered - leaving him to catch a killer, become Editor of the obscenely successful scandal magazine, Belfast Confidential, and compile the much-coveted Power List

Marked by Colin Bateman's signature blend of sinister violence and sidesplitting dialogue, Cycle of Violence is the story of Miller, Belfast's bicycling journalist, and his "cycle of violence", on assignment to Crossmaheart, a post-terrorist ghetto where the preferred response to bone-chilling murder is a hilarious one-liner, and vice versa. The town harbors secrets more sordid than the locals' resumes of political "activism", and Miller, embroiled in a troubled romance, finds himself playing inquisitive reporter in this notoriously fatal place to ask questions.

Dan Starkey - international man of inaction - rides again. How far can he fall this time?Ex-journalist Dan Starkey is stuck in a grimy Belfast bedsit. His life is a disaster, and his only solace is the pub round the corner (and the last can in his hand). He needs to get out more (particularly since the sessions at Relate with his wife Patricia have been cancelled and she's hooked up with new man Clive). He really, really needs something to get his teeth into. Fellow ex-journalist Mark Corkery provides that something. Corkery, whose secret persona is The Horse Whisperer, an internet horse-racing gossip, wants him to investigate Geordie McClean, the man behind Irish American Racing. Simple enough for a man with Dan's experience, surely? But Trouble is Dan's middle name. And trouble is what he finds.

Dan Starkey, the ducking and diving hapless investigator, takes centre stage again in this brilliant new novel by the master of comic crime. Radio shock-jock and self-styled people's champion Jack Caramac is used to courting controversy - but when his four-year-old son is kidnapped for just one hour, and then sent back with a warning note, he knows he may have finally gone too far. Jack has no choice but to turn to Dan Starkey for help. Recently chucked by his long-suffering wife Patricia, Dan has finally given up on journalism and is now providing a boutique, bespoke service for important people with difficult problems. Dan resolves to catch whoever kidnapped Jack's son - and very soon finds himself in the middle of a violent feud between rival drug gangs, pursued by jealous husbands, unscrupulous property developers and vicious killers as the case spirals ever more out of his control...

Dan Starkey investigates the birth of a new Messiah on a small island off the coast of Ireland. Back together with his wife Patricia and the baby -- Little Stevie -- that resulted from her affair, Dan accepts a curious commission from Cardinal Daley to investigate the tiny island of Wrathlin, where the inhabitants appear to believe that the new Messiah has been born. The child in question turns out to be a girl called Christine, and the local population has become as defensive and generally crazy as the cast of The Crucible. At first it's just funny for Dan and Trish, but fairly soon the mood turns very much darker. Packed with Bateman's trademarket mixture of jokes, shocks and tenderness, Turbulent Priests is his best novel yet.

Someone has started killing killers and Detective Martin Murphy has gone undercover in 'Confront', a support group for relatives of murder victims. He suspects them of carrying out revenge killings but it seems that they have been doing their own detective work and before Murphy realises, the group is forcing him to face the harrowing events of his own past. Now Murphy must come to terms with the past whilst also bringing the killers' killer to justice. The only problem is he's starting to think that whoever's doing the killing may have a point. After all, revenge is sweet... isn't it?

Michael Ryan was the author of a runaway bestseller, Space Coast, but its publication coincided with his wife's murder. Now he's back to face the ghosts of his past.Michael met Claire when she was living with local hard man Tommy, a Gulf War vet. When Tommy leaves town to be a roadie for a band playing a six week stint on a cruise ship, Michael falls in love with Claire, they marry and he writes his novel. But then Claire is killed in a bank raid. Ten years later Michael returns to the scene of the crime to exorcise the ghosts of the past and try to write his second novel. But he discovers the grim truth behind his wife's murder and encounters the strangest of small-town behaviour...

The inimitable hero Dan Starkey gets caught up in the world of writing (he can handle that) terrorists (he's been there before) and movie hype (more frightening than anything yet encountered) in a cracking adventure that takes him from Dublin to the Cannes Film Festival. And it's not just bullets that Dan is dodging, when a smouldering romance threatens the frequently-rocky balance of his marriage to Patricia.

More black comedy than true Irish noir,  Divorcing Jack is my first foray into Colin Bateman. Based on first impressions I believe I will read more of his books, even if this one did not deliver on all fronts. I am already familiar with several flavors of noir : classic 1940's West Coast, East Coast, Florida camp, Scandinavian bleak, Scottish rumpus (Brookmyre). This here is an attempt to branch out into Irish, with London calling next (Ken Bruen?). And as I like to do with new authors, I have chosen the debut novel, in order to see how the author and his characters develop in time.The hero of the story is not Jack, and is not getting a divorce (hopefully). His name is Dan Starkey, and he is a satirical columnist for a Belfast newspaper. Safe choice: write what you know about, Mr Bateman! although I hope the author is less fond of drink than his diminutive hero. Drinking lands Starkey in trouble with the missus after she catches him kissing a girl he picked up while lying pickled to the ears in a public park. Beer and cider do not for a good hangover make. Worse than the hangover is the discovery of the dying body of his one night stand who murmurs with her last breath : "Divorce Jack!". This is the starting point of a wild rollercoaster ride peppered with car chases, gunfights, wife taking revenge for the betrayal, multiple kidnappings, underworld bosses chasing Dan side by side with the IRA, the Protestant paramilitary factions, the police, the army, possibly a couple of foreign Secret Services too. Everything going down while the country prepares to elect a new Prime Minister, a guy Starkey intensely dislikes for his 'hollier than thou' pacifist agenda. And let's not forget the surprise nun with the bad atitude from the cover: Her name was Lee Cooper. Her parents had a warped sense of humour. And her friends called her Jean. As a stand up comedy routine the novel is often real funny, but uneven. Some jokes are a hoot, others are a tad stale and forced. I chalk this down to debut jitters of a talented artist trying too hard to impress on his first night out. As political satire it functions even better, reminding me that laughing while climbing to the gallows pole is one way to keep sane while the world around burns. And Belfast knows all about burning. There's a little piece of trivia in the book that almost passes unnoticed but it is enough to make me not want to find out more about the game of Irish roulette:  it involves a petrol bomb and an ability to blow out matches very quickly. As a crime novel it suffers somewhat from lack of originality, or it may be the case that I have seen one too many Guy Ritchie movies or that Bateman is too similar to Christopher Brookmyre, who writes much funnier and much, much more biting satire across the Irish sea in bonny Scotland. The story is saved by local colour, a riveting glimpse at a region ravaged by civil war, sectarian terrorism and distrust. At one point Dan Starkey is assigned as a minder for a visiting American journalist, and they get to talking: - Stick to calling it Northern Ireland, although you'll hear variations. If you're a Loyalist you'll call it Ulster, if you're a Nationalist you call it the North of Ireland or the Six Counties, if you're the British Government you call it the Province.- And what do you call it, Mr. Starkey?- Home. As a final impression, the novel holds together well in the plot and character department, but the general vibe is of light reading, as the more serious tones (present and truly disturbing) were subverted by the need to be funny at all cost. There's enough promise here to continue with the setting and its creator.

Detective Jimmy Murphy has been given one last chance. After a terrible experience working undercover in Northern Ireland, he's in London, and about to fail another psychological assessment. While his life spirals out of control, his boss sends him back undercover to expose a gang of diamond thieves who have just burnt a security guard alive. As he gets closer to the gang's leader, Murphy realises their plans are more ambitious - and more deadly - than anyone expected...

Not a lot happens in Niagara Falls. It's a sleepy Canadian town full of honeymooners and tourists, and that's how Inspector Frank Corrigan likes it. He saw enough trouble as a cop in Northern Ireland. Now he's happy dealing with parking offences and the odd drunk, although since his wife left him and took their daughter, 'happy' may not be quite the word.Then a reincarnated Native American princess by the name of Lelewala canoes over the Falls - and survives. Or so she says. And Frank falls in love. And finds himself confronting the greatest terrorist of the age at an international gathering of drug dealers.And that's before the music starts...

When notorious gangster 'Fat Sam' Mahood is murdered, the chief suspect is arrested nearby. But he seems to have suffered a breakdown. Incarcerated in a mental institution, he's known only as the Man in the White Suit. The suspect remains an enigma until Nurse Brenda calls on Mystery Man, former patient and owner of No Alibis, Belfast's finest mystery bookshop, to bring his powers of investigation to bear... However, before our hero can even begin, the Man in the White Suit is arrested for the murder of a fellow patient. But is he a double murderer or a helpless scapegoat? Intrigue, conspiracy, and ancient Latin curses all combine to give the Small Bookseller with No Name his most difficult case to date.

The hilarious new Mystery Man crime caper from the master of menace and mirthYou don't say no to Dr. Yes, the charismatic plastic surgeon on the fast track to fame and fortune. But when the wife of obscure and paranoid crime writer Augustine Wogan disappears shortly after entering his exclusive clinic, the Small Bookseller with No Name is persuaded to investigate. As fatherhood approaches, our intrepid hero is interested only in a quick buck and the chance to exploit a neglected writer, but he soon finds himself up to his neck in murder, make-up and madness - and face to face with the most gruesome serial killer since the last one.

<p>Colin Bateman is a novelist, screenwriter and former journalist from Bangor, County Down, Northern Ireland.</p>

Black Books meets Lead Balloon meets Gavin and Stacey.The Small Shop Keeper With No Name is back. Hired to find the vandals responsible for spraying graffiti on an aspiring insurance magnate's advertising hoarding, he soon finds himself up to his ears in intrigue and battling to solve murders which echo in the corridors of power. With MI5 getting involved and everyone on the hunt for a missing Jack Russell, can Our Man Behind the Counter stay alive as well as keep his world renowned but criminally ignored No Alibis mystery bookshop afloat?

A twenty-nine-year-old man lives alone in his Glasgow flat. The telephone rings; a casual conversation, but behind this a job offer. The clues are there if you know to look for them. He is an expert. A loner. Freelance. Another job is another job, but what if this organization wants more?A meeting at a club. An offer. A target: Lewis Winter, a necessary sacrifice that will be only the first step in an all-out war between crime syndicates the likes of which hasn't been seen for decades. It's easy to kill a man. It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know this. People who do it badly find out the hard way. The hard way has consequences.

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A look at the professional and personal lives of the staff at New York's Knickerbocker Hospital during the early part of the twentieth century.

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An invisible and mysterious force field descends upon a small actual town of Chester's Mill, Maine, USA, trapping residents inside, cut off from the rest of civilization. The trapped townspeople must discover the secrets and purpose 

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A gangster family epic set in 1900s England, centering on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby.

U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades goes after hedge fund king Bobby "Axe" Axelrod in a battle between two powerful New York figures.

A young man searches for answers as to why he's been suffering from supernatural possessions his entire life.

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A high school teacher travels back in time to prevent John F. Kennedy's assassination.

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