Reviewed on Richard & Judy on Wednesday 17 June 2009
A gripping and blackly funny mystery. A bookshop manager becomes a reluctant private eye after the real private eye's business (whose premises were next door) closes down. After a few easy cases he thinks he's got his new profession sussed - then he finds himself with a murder on his hands.
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 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. And when they break into the shuttered shop on a dare, they have their answer.
Suddenly they're catapulted along a murder trail which leads them from modern dance to serial killers...
Bateman was a journalist in Ireland before becoming a full-time writer. His first novel, DIVORCING JACK, won the Betty Trask Prize, and all his novels have been critically acclaimed. He wrote the screen plays for the feature films DIVORCING JACK and WILD ABOUT HARRY and the popular BBC TV series MURPHY'S LAW starring James Nesbitt. He lives in Ireland with his family.
