Black Books meets Lead Balloon meets Gavin and Stacey in this hugely entertaining follow-up to MYSTERY MAN, from acclaimed author Bateman.
The Small Shop Keeper With No Name is back. Hired to find the vandals responsible for spraying graffiti on an aspiring insurance magnate's advertising hoarding, he soon finds himself up to his ears in intrigue and battling to solve murders which echo in the corridors of power. With MI5 getting involved and everyone on the hunt for a missing Jack Russell, can Our Man Behind the Counter stay alive as well as keep his world renowned but criminally ignored No Alibis mystery bookshop afloat?
His thick and fast-growing medical file says he should be retired, but Detective Martin Murphy wants to get back on the streets, doing what he does best.
Murphy has been given one last chance. After a terrible experience working undercover in Northern Ireland, he's in London, and about to fail another psychological assessment. While his life spirals out of control, his boss sends him back undercover to expose a gang of diamond thieves who have just burnt a security guard alive. As he gets closer to the gang's leader, Murphy realises their plans are more ambitious and more deadly than anyone could have expected...
Dan Starkey - international man of inaction - rides again. How far can he fall this time?
Ex-journalist Dan Starkey is stuck in a grimy Belfast bedsit. His life is a disaster, and his only solace is the pub round the corner. He needs to get out more, particularly since the sessions at Relate with his wife Patricia have been cancelled and she's hooked up with new man Clive. Fellow ex-journalist Mark Corkery, whose secret persona is The Horse Whisperer, an internet horse-racing gossip, wants him to investigate Geordie McClean, the man behind Irish American Racing. Simple enough for a man with Dan's experience, surely? But Trouble is Dan's middle name. And trouble is what he finds...
It's Easter, and on a glorious spring day in peaceful Three Pines, someone waits for night to fall. They plan to raise the dead...
When C. I. Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec arrives the next morning, he faces an unusual crime scene. A séance in an old, abandoned house has gone horrifically wrong and someone lies frightened to death. For in idyllic Three Pines not all is as it seems. Toxic secrets lie buried, and something terrible has finally clawed its way out. And even Gamache has something to hide. One of his own team is preparing to betray him. But who is it? And how far will they go to ensure Gamache's downfall?
Writer Ivan Connor is desperate. His publisher has turned down his new novel, his agent is out of ideas, and the only person to turn up at his latest reading is his mum.
He’s deeply jealous of Francesca Brady, a hugely successful author of fat romantic books for fat romantic people, whose expansive hair and bright red lipstick mock him from posters everywhere he goes. He’s also living at home since his marriage broke up, and he’s just collected the wrong child from school. But one night Connor stumbles on a route back to the top, via a beautiful model, two deranged psychopaths, a multi-million pound publishing fraud, true love and utter heartbreak...
Someone has started killing killers and Detective Martin Murphy has gone undercover in ‘Confront’, a support group for relatives of murder victims. He suspects them of carrying out revenge killings but it seems that they have been doing their own detective work and before Murphy realises, the group is forcing him to face the harrowing events of his own past. Now Murphy must come to terms with the past whilst also bringing the killers’ killer to justice. The only problem is he’s starting to think that whoever’s doing the killing may have a point. After all, revenge is sweet... isn’t it?
They say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. Well, as far as Dan Starkey’s concerned, ‘they’ can stick it where the sun don’t shine because right now helping his wife with the unpacking is the least of his worries...
No sooner has Dan moved house, than his best mate, Mouse, is brutally murdered – leaving him to catch a killer, become editor of celebrity scandal magazine Belfast Confidential and compile its much-coveted Power List edition. But he's not the only one with a hit list to complete. Someone's systematically killing local celebrities and unless Dan can stop them, the magazine's going under and so is he... by about six feet.
Die-hard copper Superintendent James 'Marsh' Mallow, of the Belfast CID, is nearing the end of his career, but he's not handing in his badge until he's nailed notorious politician and racketeer Pink Harrison. A dismembered body has turned up and Mallow is convinced he's got his man. Problem is, take Pink Harrison down, and the trouble of the full-scale rioting kind is likely to flare up. Then there's Walter, the civil servant who's infatuated with Margaret, the carrot-cake induced coma victim, 'Steve' in 'Office 12' and Redmond, terrorist and occasional birdwatcher, whose only way out of jail is to get himself killed and trust in reincarnation...
Michael Ryan was the author of a runaway bestseller, Space Coast, but its publication coincided with his wife's murder. Now he's back to face the ghosts of his past.
Michael met Claire when she was living with local hard man Tommy, a Gulf War vet. When Tommy leaves town to be a roadie for a band playing a six week stint on a cruise ship, Michael falls in love with Claire, they marry and he writes his novel. But then Claire is killed in a bank raid. Ten years later Michael returns to the scene of the crime to exorcise the ghosts of the past and try to write his second novel. But he discovers the grim truth behind his wife's murder and encounters the strangest of small-town behaviour...
A superbly gripping and blackly funny mystery by the king of the comic crime caper.
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. It’s not as if there’s any danger involved. It’s an easy way to sell books to his gullible customers and Alison, the beautiful girl in the jewellery shop across the road, will surely be impressed. Except she’s not – because she can see the bigger picture. And when they break into the shuttered shop next door on a dare, they have their answer. Suddenly they’re catapulted along a murder trail which leads them from small-time publishing to Nazi concentration camps and serial killers...
