Divorcing Jack (Paperback)

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.

Review
'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

Here's what happens as a result of Belfast columnist Dan Starkey's oh-so-brief dalliance with Margaret McBride, whose "eyes were close together, but not so close as to suggest Catholicism": Dan's tax-inspector wife Patricia catches the pair together and throws Dan out. Margaret McBride and her mother both get killed. The police go a-hunting for Dan. Dan goes a-hunting for an audiotape worth (UKP)100,000. Dan's brief acquaintance with Mark Brinn, the Alliance Party candidate for Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, takes an unexpectedly nasty turn. Dan meets a trainee nurse prowling the city dressed as a nun, and then a priest whose life has been mined by his recent heart transplant. Dan falls in with Cow Pat Coogan, Mad Dog Angus, and several other unsavory types who want the audiotape. Patricia gets kidnapped, and sleeps with her captor. A visiting American journalist whom Dan has been escorting around the city makes an abrupt exit from the scene. Dan drinks a little less than usual and says some very funny things. Several bombs go off. There's nothing special about the story this novel unfolds, but Bateman, himself a Belfast journalist (did you guess?), has struck gold the first time out with his mordant, loquacious hero and his Mined landscape. The promised sequel can't arrive too soon. (Kirkus Reviews)

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• Books > Crime, Thrillers & Mystery > Mystery
• Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > B > Bateman, Colin
• Books > Fiction > By Period

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