The Beiderbecke Affair by Alan Plater (Mandarin 1985)

The Adult Education Institute was built in the nineteenth century by a paternalistic mill-owner with the stated aim of bringing a spiritual uplift to the artisans of the area. A hundred years later, it still had not succeeded. The building, designed in the Gothic Inspirational manner, was now a hive of small rooms in which groups of predominately earnest people discussed D. H. Lawrence, watched The Battleship Potemkin or threw pots. It was not unusual for six people to be plotting revolution in Room 5, while across the corridor in Room 6, another six people were plotting counter-revolution. All twelve would meet in The Bells afterwards for a pint.

I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle (Ecco Books 2007)

Rich had had a much less tragedy-free life. We needn't go into the details, since it's a long, sad and ultimately unoriginal story, but as a result Rich had developed a coping mechanism by which all of the terrible things that happened to him were merely wacky complications that would, before the movie of his life was over, be resolved in an audience-pleasing happy ending. He occasionally worried his life might be an independent film, or worse, a Swedish flick, but he chose to behave as if the movie he lived was a raucous teen comedy and he was somebody like Ferris Bueller or Otter from Animal House, or, worst-case scenario, that guy who fucked a pie.

Mystery Man by Bateman (Headline 2009)

This is all quite new to me, so I am not above seeking wiser counsel. When that isn't available I occasionally consult my assistant Jeff. I would say that he works for me Tuesdays and Thursdays, but it would be more accurate to state that he appears in the store twice a week and manages to spend most of that time on the phone calling disinterested parties on behalf of the local chapter of Amnesty International. Jeff has been rather subdued since the death of General Pinochet. Human rights violations under his regime had been Jeff's area of expertise, but now that the General was gone, the spotlight had shifted on to more recent abuses in the Middle East, leaving him marginalised. He had committed the cardinal sin of failing to move with the bleeding-heart-liberal times, he was yesterday's man clinging to the vain hope that someone even more despotic would come to power in Santiago and rescue him from his do-gooding isolation. I thought drawing him into helping me with the case might rescue him from his doldrums in a way that my humming of 'Don't Cry for Mr, Chile' every time I passed him hadn't.