But Seriously, Folks …

I had an interview with The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman published in the Evening Herald during the week. Currently promoting THE PRISONER OF BRENDA, which blends classic crime / mystery tropes with blackly comic scenarios, Bateman is a former winner of the Goldsboro ‘Last Laugh’ prize awarded at Crimefest. But is comic crime fiction taken seriously by readers? To wit:

Despite his runaway success, however, Bateman still encounters purists who object to the combination of crime fiction and humour.
  Do readers take comedy crime seriously? “I think the very few readers who buy it do,” he says. “You would guess from sales in general that readers prefer their crime fiction deadly serious and quite bloody, and that may just be the fact of it, or because that is what’s put in front of them.
  “I think that if crime that is quite serious, but happens to be funny as well -- I mean, Raymond Chandler was funny, wasn’t he? -- was promoted with a bit of muscle then it could sell extremely well.”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Nobody Move, This Is A Review: THE PRISONER OF BRENDA by Colin Bateman

The fourth of Colin Bateman’s ‘Mystery Man’ novels, THE PRISONER OF BRENDA (Headline), features for its protagonist an unnamed man who is the proprietor of No Alibis bookshop in Belfast and the most unlikely hero in crime fiction. A puny specimen, Mystery Man is a coward, a flake and a hypochondriac who suffers from brittle bones, and yet he finds himself dragged into solving mysteries time and again on the basis that he has read every crime and mystery novel worth reading, and thus understands the criminal mind to a degree that no other detective could.
  Here Mystery Man is approached by Nurse Brenda, a psychiatric nurse, to help out with establishing the identity of a man who has been incarcerated in Purdysburn mental hospital. Known only as ‘The Man in the White Suit’, the man has apparently suffered a nervous breakdown and refuses to speak, even though he has been accused of a brutal murder.
  Mystery Man, who was previously a patient of Nurse Brenda, takes on the case against the better judgement of his girlfriend, Alison, who fears that he will suffer a relapse and find himself being dragged off to Purdysburn. But Mystery Man has the scent of a good mystery in his nostrils - and besides, someone is prepared to pay him to investigate, which is very good news given that the book industry is dying on its knees.
  The Mystery Man novels are on one level a humorous spoof of the crime and mystery genre, or at least the more extreme and clichéd crime and mystery novels. Told in the first person, so that we have access to Mystery Man’s deluded ramblings as he goes about his investigation, they are a distant (and possibly addled) cousin of the Raymond Chandler / Dashiell Hammett private eye novels, with the added bonus of Mystery Man’s knowing commentary on his own actions as he explains the various clues and avenues of investigation.
  Of course, Colin Bateman is a veteran of 22 crime novels for adults at this point, so he wraps his apparently ham-fisted spoof of the mystery novel inside a cleverly constructed mystery narrative. All told, it’s terrific fun.

The Curious Case Of Wilkie Collins And The Dry Old Tart

Interviewing writers can be a bit of a tricky business these days. No longer is it good enough, apparently, to take five minutes beforehand to strategically dog-ear a few corners in their latest tome and then plonk it down on the table and ask them earnestly where they get all their wonderful ideas. These days, for some odd reason, writers expect you to have read at least one of their books before the interview commences, and preferably the current one. Strange, I know, but there it is.
  Anyway, I’m reading the latest Mystery Man offering from The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman, aka THE PRISONER OF BRENDA (Headline, published October 25th), and very funny it is too, studded with some very nice digressions on the nature of crime fiction and not a few opinions on the quality of the books Mystery Man stocks in his crime fiction bookshop. To wit:

“He probably didn’t know that Sergeant Cuff was one of the first and greatest of fictional detectives, appearing in 1868 in Wilkie Collins’s THE MOONSTONE - a book, incidentally, hailed by Dorothy L. Sayers as probably the very finest detective story ever written. Dorothy was no slouch herself, if a bit of a dry old tart.” (pg 62)

  A pithy appraisal, I’m sure you’ll agree. And there’s plenty more where that came from, although fans of the Scandinavian crime novel may want to gird their metaphorical loins before cracking the spine …

Nurse? The Screens ...

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman will be running a two-day course called Secrets of Writing a Bestseller in November, although at this point I think the initial course has sold out and a second is being planned. Said secrets, if you’re prepared to read between the lines, may well be available to the careful reader of Bateman’s latest tome, THE PRISONER OF BRENDA (Headline), which is the fourth in the award-winning Mystery Man series and about which the blurb elves have been wibbling thusly:

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 PRISONER OF BRENDA is published on October 25th, and if the previous three Mystery Man novels are any guide, it will very probably be the funniest slice of crime / mystery you’ll read all year.
  Bateman, by the way, is opening the Kildare Readers’ Festival this year, on Friday, October 12th. The event is free but advance booking is advised.