Divorcing Jack [Paperback]

In Colin Bateman's first novel, Divorcing Jack, a witty Belfast newspaper columnist named Dan Starkey gets drunk, falls in lust, and finds himself helplessly mired in trouble with his wife and the law. Shortly after Starkey's wife catches him in the arms of another woman, that woman is murdered and Starkey becomes the prime suspect. It turns out that the deceased woman was related to an important political figure, and now thugs from several of Northern Ireland's factions are out to get Starkey. The columnist decides he must track down the killer in order to clear his own name. During the investigation, he uncovers a scandal that could potentially alter the outcome of the next national election--and destroy the country's hopes for peace.

Mostly though, this thriller chronicles the beleaguered journalist's lame efforts to stay out of trouble. Starkey isn't exactly a man of action; in fact, he's a likeable character partly because he knows he's a weak man. Late in the book, Starkey sums up his predicament: "The world was still after me, Patricia was still missing, I was still a killer on the run, and I had a disturbing tendency to burst into tears, but I wasn't going to let little things like that get me down." He copes with stress by 1) drinking too much and 2) making jokes. When a nun in a miniature car saves Starkey from a hail of gunfire, for instance, he spends a few moments wondering what the proper name of her headgear is and decides to call it a Godpiece. Dan Starkey makes an entertaining guide to war-torn Northern Ireland, even while he discovers, time and again, that the pen is not mightier than the sword. --Jill Marquis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘Hysterically funny one-liners and sinister Kafkaesque developments’
Daily Mail

‘Divorcing Jack is richly paranoid and very funny, it manages to say more about the Troubles in 280 vivid pages than reams of earnest reportage ever could’
The Sunday Times

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Dan Starkey is a journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife Patricia an appetite for drinking and dancing. Then Dan meets Margaret, a beautiful and apparently impoverished student, and things begin to get out of hand. And then Margaret is murdered. This novel won the 1994 Betty Trask Prize.

Dan Starkey is a young journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife Patricia a prodigious appetite for drinking and partying. Then Dan meets Margaret, a beautiful student, and things begin to get out of hand.

Terrifyingly, Margaret is murdered and Patricia kidnapped. Dan has no idea why, but before long he too is a target, running as fast as he can in a race against time to solve the mystery and to save his marriage.

"A joy from start to finish…Witty, fast-paced and throbbing with menace, 'Divorcing Jack' reads like 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' rewritten for the '90s by Roddy Doyle"
TIME OUT

"Grabs you by the throat…a magnificent debut. Unlike any thriller you have ever read before…like 'The Day of the Jackal' out of the Marx Brothers"
SUNDAY PRESS

"Fresh, funny…an Ulster Carl Hiaasen"
MAIL ON SUNDAY

"Will do for Belfast and South Armagh what Bram Stoker did for Transylvania"
RTE GUIDE

Colin Bateman was born in Northern Ireland in 1962 and educated at Bangor Grammar School before joining the ‘County Down Spectator’, where he became the deputy editor until 1996. In 1990 he received a Journalist’s Fellowship to Oxford University for his reports from Uganda and has received a Northern Ireland Press Award for his weekly satirical column. He won the Betty Trask Award in 1994.