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 …

  For the rest, clickety-click here …

Make Mine A Nun With A Gun

As all Three Regular Readers will be aware, The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman published NINE INCHES this month, and terrific it is too: very, very funny, but very dark too. A tough combination to pull off, but then Bateman has been doing so ever since very first Dan Starkey novel, DIVORCING JACK. The good news for those who haven’t had the pleasure is that DIVORCING JACK is back in print, with a spanking new cover, and an irresistible subtitle: ‘Vodka, Violence and a Nun With a Gun’. Anyone interested in this beast we call the new wave of Irish crime writing, or ‘Emerald Noir’, need look no further for its seminal text. Quoth the blurb elves:

I was upstairs with a girl I shouldn’t have been upstairs with when my wife whispered in my ear, ‘You have twenty-four hours to move out.’ The book that started it all, Bateman’s first novel published in 1995. It introduced the world to the hapless, endlessly wily and witty Belfast journalist Dan Starkey. Dan shares with his wife an appetite for drinking and dancing. But when he meets Margaret, things get seriously out of hand. Terrifyingly, unbelievably, she is murdered. Before long Dan is a target himself, racing against time to crack the mystery.

  I’ll always have a very soft spot for DIVORCING JACK, because it was the book that allowed me believe that I might be able to make a stab at crime writing. Not for the usual reason - ‘Jayz, that’s crap, I can do better than that.’ No, it was the winning blend of hard-boiled prose and humour, a Chandleresque take on the Troubles, catnip to a wannabe writer for whom Chandler was where it started and ended (although now I know that Bateman was more influenced by Robert B Parker). A brave book too, given that the mid-’90s was a particularly fraught time in Northern Ireland, and DIVORCING JACK takes no prisoners as it paints all sides with the stupid brush. Anyway, I’m delighted to see it back in print, not least because it’s all the excuse I need to give it yet another read. I believe the phrase is ‘unalloyed joy’ …

I Choo-Choo-Choose Arlene Hunt

Yesterday I do be mentioning Arlene Hunt in dispatches from last weekend’s trip to New York, so I do (sorry, but we were in an Irish bar on Friday night, and it takes time for the pixie dust to wear off), and it’s fair to say that one of the highlights of the weekend was seeing Arlene’s latest tome, THE CHOSEN, in the flesh for the first time. A very handsome tome it is too, and nice to see a crime novel that opts for a white cover rather than the usual grim tones that tend to dominate designers’ palettes. It’s all the more impressive, methinks, when you consider that THE CHOSEN is Arlene’s first outing under her own aegis, as it were: after six well-received titles published with a traditional house, Arlene has taken publishing matters into her own hands, setting up Portnoy Publishing with her husband. I wish them a fair wind and calm seas as they set sail into the future …
  As for the novel itself, Mike Nicol over at the very fine Crime Beat blog is currently publishing extracts from a number of contemporary Irish crime novels, and Arlene’s contribution from THE CHOSEN can be found here. “A taut, sharp, gripping re-imagining of the serial-killer novel,” says Tana French, which is all kinds of nice.
  Elsewhere, Crime Beat also features extracts from Alan Glynn’s latest, BLOODLAND; a snippet from Colin Bateman’s forthcoming tome NINE INCHES that begins - oh yes! - with, “It was a dark and stormy night …”; and my own humble tome, ABSOLUTE ZERO COOL, which is currently sulking in a corner and wishing it had been written by Colin Bateman. Ungrateful buggers, my books …

Uptown, Top Rankin

The Artist Formerly Known as Colin Bateman gets in touch to avail of the two molecules of oxygen publicity Crime Always Pays offers, suggesting that we might like to mention the fact that tonight, Thursday 22nd, he’ll be interviewing one of the crime writing world’s luminaries tonight in Bangor, Norn Iron. To wit:

“I’m launching ‘Colin Bateman’s Crime Night’ at the Aspects Literary Festival in my local manor of Bangor, which will in a very minor way feature the launch of my new novel, NINE INCHES, and in a very major way see me attempt to interview Ian Rankin in the festival marquee before 300 baying fans of yon Scottish bloke. Amongst other questions, I will ask him if he would ever considered dropping his first name and just being called Rankin, because it’s all the rage.”

  Short notice, I know, but hey - that’s the way the Batemeister rolls. For booking details, clickety-click here.
  Meanwhile, I understand that said whippersnapper Ian Rankin also has a new title for your delectation, said tome being called THE IMPOSSIBLE DEAD, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

Malcolm Fox and his team from Internal Affairs are back. They’ve been sent to Fife to investigate whether fellow cops covered up for a corrupt colleague, Detective Paul Carter. Carter has been found guilty of misconduct with his own uncle, also in the force, having proved to be his nephew’s nemesis. But what should be a simple job is soon complicated by intimations of conspiracy and cover-up - and a brutal murder, a murder committed with a weapon that should not even exist. The spiralling investigation takes Fox back in time to 1985, a year of turmoil in British political life. Terrorists intent on a split between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom were becoming more brazen and ruthless, sending letter-bombs and poisonous spores to government offices, plotting kidnaps and murder, and trying to stay one step ahead of the spies sent to flush them out. Fox has a duty to get at the truth, while the body count rises, the clock starts ticking, and he fights for his professional and personal life.

  So there you have it. Two titans of the contemporary crime writing scene together at last, in Bangor, Norn Iron. The place may never be the same again …

On Loving Colin Bateman, One Inch At A Time

How do I love thee / The artist formerly known as Colin Bateman / Let me count the ways … Yup, we’re up to nine reasons and counting, folks, for lo! A new Dan Starkey novel is on the way, said tome bearing not only the understated title NINE INCHES, but also the subtitle, ‘The Butcher, The Barmaid and The Brothers From Hell’. Oh, and an image of a false leg. Or prosthetic limb, if you prefer. Anyway, the blurb elves have been wittering thusly:

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 ...

  Yep, it’s Bangor’s answer to … actually, scratch that. There’s no question in the world that might provide a logical, reasonable answer to the lunacy that is a Dan Starkey novel. Are we happy? Well, yes and no. It’s nice to know a Dan Starkey is on the way, but the book doesn’t hit the shelves until mid-October. Boo, etc. Still, NINE INCHES delayed is NINE INCHES increased, as our sainted Great Aunt Petunia always said …

And Quiet Flows The Dan

Published in 1994, as Northern Ireland’s ‘Troubles’ were winding down, and the Celtic Tiger was cranking up, DIVORCING JACK is one of the seminal tracts in the evolution of the modern Irish crime novel. Comfortable in its skin as it embraced and subverted the tropes and conventions of the classic crime novels, the novel was also assured enough to poke fun at some of Ireland’s then sacred cows.
  Its ‘hero’, the self-serving journalist Dan Starkey, featured in a number of Colin Bateman’s subsequent novels, but Dan has been curiously quiet of late. Happily, NINE INCHES, which will be published in September, sees Dan’s return, with the blurb elves wittering thusly:

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 ...

  The Big Question: where has Dan Starkey been all these years? Is it possible the ‘ducking and diving hapless investigator’ has been lying low, perhaps even hiding in plain sight, as a nameless ducking and diving hapless investigator who runs a crime fiction bookstore in Belfast? The answer to this, and many other questions, will not be revealed when NINE INCHES finally arrives.
  As for that title, could it possibly refer to the cranial dimensions of big-brain, clever-clogs Starkey? Or does it refer to a less cerebral measurement? Only time, that perfidiously twittering canary, will tell …