NINE INCHES And Counting

I mentioned last week that DIVORCING JACK, by The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman, has been republished, this in tandem with Bateman’s current release, NINE INCHES. The new tome features DV’s Dan Starkey, although the former wise-cracking journalist is now a wise-cracking private eye (of sorts), in Bateman’s 26th novel to date. Twenty-six? I’ll be delighted if I manage to get six published in my entire life.
  Anyway, I had the very great pleasure of interviewing Bateman for the Irish Examiner recently, to mark the publication of NINE INCHES, with said interview opening up a lot like this:

“A few years ago I was in Amsterdam promoting a book,” says crime writer Colin Bateman, “and got held at knife-point by a couple of guys when I was going back to my hotel late at night. They wanted my wallet. A hero or a fool might have tried to disarm them. Dan Starkey would undoubtedly have handed over his wallet, and then gotten stabbed for being cheeky. In real life, I screamed like a girl, and they were so surprised I was able to just walk through them, wallet nice and safe.
  “Um, I’m not sure what my point is with that story,” he says. “Maybe it’s that fiction is a mixture of real life, fantasy and bizarre circumstance.”
  It’s certainly the case with Colin Bateman’s anarchic brand of fiction. His latest novel, NINE INCHES, is his 26th in total, a formidable body of work that began with DIVORCING JACK in 1994. That novel featured the wise-cracking journalist Dan Starkey, who returns in NINE INCHES after a six-year hiatus …

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