Mystery Man
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Review
Bateman is no slacker when it comes to producing comic crime masterpieces. --The Mirror
Product Description
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. Suddenly he is catapulted along a murder trail which leads from modern dance to Nazi secrets and serial killers... This recording is Unabridged. Typically Abridged audiobooks are not more than 60% of the author's work and as low as 30% with characters and plotlines removed.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
There's plenty of humour to be found and a great deal of potential for further development (and even a rumoured TV series) in Bateman's creation of the Mystery Man. A small independent bookseller, the "hero" is the owner of Belfast's premiere crime specialist bookstore No Alibis ('Murder is our Business'), who gets mixed up in a series of misadventures when customers start turning up to the shop looking for him to solve small cases now that the Private Detective next door seems to have closed-up business. Stolen leather trousers and a missing person he can deal with - just about - but when he gets involved in the Case of the Dancing Jew, not to mention mixed up with the girl from the jewellery shop across the road, it takes more than a few Twix and Starbucks coffees to shake him out of his closeted existence.
A genuine bookshop in Belfast on Botanic Avenue, No Alibis, its owner and its customers don't get perhaps receive the most flattering of depictions, but this is Bateman's particularly self-deprecatory Belfast type of humour and it's very funny, so it is. A few old jokes/stories/urban legends that have done the rounds for years are dug up and dusted down, the neurotic lead character perhaps owes something to Ignatius J. Reilly from John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (or they've at least shared a ward together at some point), but it's all just a means for Bateman to poke fun at local types - booksellers, publishers, ex-paramilitary taxi drivers, street thugs (Botanic Avenue Irregulars indeed) and local small businessmen - not in a mean spirited way, but in a lightly humorous and sometimes just downright hilarious manner.
A genuine bookshop in Belfast on Botanic Avenue, No Alibis, its owner and its customers don't get perhaps receive the most flattering of depictions, but this is Bateman's particularly self-deprecatory Belfast type of humour and it's very funny, so it is. A few old jokes/stories/urban legends that have done the rounds for years are dug up and dusted down, the neurotic lead character perhaps owes something to Ignatius J. Reilly from John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces (or they've at least shared a ward together at some point), but it's all just a means for Bateman to poke fun at local types - booksellers, publishers, ex-paramilitary taxi drivers, street thugs (Botanic Avenue Irregulars indeed) and local small businessmen - not in a mean spirited way, but in a lightly humorous and sometimes just downright hilarious manner.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I have enjoyed Colin Bateman all the way from "Divorcing Jack" - I have even forgiven him the rubbish that was "Maid of the Mist" - but to an extent in the last 5/6 years he's got a bit formulaic.
This is a real break from that though - the hero is a brilliant character - weirdo verging(?) on autistic - but genuinly interesting and clever.
Like all Colin Bateman books the plot is secondary to the one-liners and the jokes - but that was also true for PG Woodhouse and so it ain't a criticism!
This is a real break from that though - the hero is a brilliant character - weirdo verging(?) on autistic - but genuinly interesting and clever.
Like all Colin Bateman books the plot is secondary to the one-liners and the jokes - but that was also true for PG Woodhouse and so it ain't a criticism!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Mystery man is an interesting book. It starts promisingly with a good set up but then falls into a bit of a pit as more detail about the main character (whose name we never learn) and his neurotic nature are revealed.
The character is the owner of a specialist crime bookshop in Belfast who takes on an investigative role when the private detective next door vanishes.
But then the character gradually reveals himself to be a repressed, almost autistic, child of neglecting parents with an absurd number of foibles that start off mild and believable but become more and more extreme as we go. Ultimately it is over the top and detracts from the focus of the novel as a crime story.
It's first person and it is well written. Some of the characters do come across as a bit stereotypical but that might just be because we are seeing through the eyes of the nameless lead. I just found that the pace of character building was slow and over-dominant.
The character is the owner of a specialist crime bookshop in Belfast who takes on an investigative role when the private detective next door vanishes.
But then the character gradually reveals himself to be a repressed, almost autistic, child of neglecting parents with an absurd number of foibles that start off mild and believable but become more and more extreme as we go. Ultimately it is over the top and detracts from the focus of the novel as a crime story.
It's first person and it is well written. Some of the characters do come across as a bit stereotypical but that might just be because we are seeing through the eyes of the nameless lead. I just found that the pace of character building was slow and over-dominant.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not as good as Dan Stakeys
This book reads quite well but its basis has been published before.
Seems Colin is dipping into his own thin ideas book already. Read more
Seems Colin is dipping into his own thin ideas book already. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Vince W
Mystery man remains a mystery
In the main, I like Colin Bateman's humour; I had a good few chuckles in this book but they weren't enough for me to be over-impressed with the storyline. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Michael Watson
Best one so far
I've read most of the Bateman books over the years and this is by far and away the best. I like the Murphy and Dan Starkey books too but the Mystery man character is his finest... Read more
Published 6 months ago by J. Mcmenemy
Unusual but all the better for it
I chanced my arm ordering this and a couple of his other books. I'd never heard of him. I have to say our bizarre hero is very weird. Read more
Published 8 months ago by mitya
completely cracked me up
I had never heard of Bateman but my daughter had this on audio from the library and loaned it to me. I had to stop listening to it on public transport I was laughing so much. Read more
Published 10 months ago by posh sith
Mystery Man
Can a man who is a paranoiac, a hypochondriac and is pretty much scared of everything use his knowledge of detective fiction to solve real cases and in turn get the girl? Read more
Published 13 months ago by Lori
Funny Man
I would give it 5 stars on the strength of the first few chapters alone. I laughed so hard at one point that I was tempted to wake my peacefully sleeping husband to share the joy... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Rola
Irish humour is the best!
To get the best out of this book you need to read it with an Irish accent. I loved the main character with all his phobias and insecurities and his take on other people. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Aud from Wales
funny & very well written
Bought for my husband who thinks this and the sequel Day of the jack Russel are the funniest books in the world,tho both stories are slightly similar! Read more
Published 15 months ago by benana
Mystery Man
Not my normal type of book but bought it because of a review on Amazon for his next book in which it recommended reading this one first. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mrs. S. K. Ellis
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