The Prisoner of Brenda by Colin Bateman (Headline 2012)

She came into No Alibis, the finest mystery bookshop in all of Belfast, bedraggled from the autumn wind and rain and sleet and hail, pulled her red hood down and spluttered hello and long time no see and wouldn’t this be a great wee country if we just had nice weather, all in one puffy gasp, and I gave her the look I keep for idiots who deserve to be struck about the head with a hammer, but made sure to add a welcoming smile just to confuse her. Times were hard in the book trade, and one couldn’t afford to look a horse-face in the gift-mouth.

I did in fact recognise her, because I never forget a long toothy gob, but I wasn’t sure if she would remember me. She had been nice to me in the past, but that was no guarantee of anything. People change, or they have ulterior motives. You have to be on your guard at all times. I have been stabbed in the back thousands of times and have the mental scars to prove it, and one physical one where Mother caught me with a fish hook.

She stood there, dripping, and said, ‘So how are you? How have you been?’

‘Fine,’ I said. There was a small sign hanging from the till that said Ask About Our Christmas Club. It was not aligned properly. I fixed it. Despite this, she did not ask. After a while I remembered to say, ‘How are you?’

My on-off girlfriend Alison had lately been coaching me in the niceties, but I found them difficult, and ultimately, hypocritical. I didn’t care how she was. I didn’t care how anyone was. What was the point? We were all going to die.

‘You do remember me, don’t you?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Nurse Brenda.’

She smiled. ‘Nurse Brenda,’ she repeated.

‘Nurse Brenda,’ I said.”

Dr. Yes by (Colin) Bateman (Headline 2010)

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.

Spring was in the air, which was depressing enough, what with pollen, and bees, and bats, but my on/off girlfriend was also making my life miserable because of her pregnancy, which she continued to accuse me of being responsible for, despite repeatedly failing to produce DNA evidence. She whined and she moaned and she criticised. It was all part of a bizarre attempt to make me a better man. Meanwhile she seemed content to pile on the beef. She now had a small double chin, which she blamed on her conditions and I blamed on Maltesers. There was clearly no future for us. In other news, the great reading public of Belfast continued to embrace the internet for their purchases rather than No Alibis, this city's finest mystery bookshop, while my part-time criminal investigations, which might have been relied upon to provide a little light relief, had recently taken a sordid turn, leaving a rather unpleasant taste in the mouth, although some of that may have been Pot Noodle.

Cycle of Violence by Colin Bateman (Arcade Publishing 1995)

I'm not stupid, not stupid at all. I'm just not qualified at anything. I've no exams. Wasn't much cop at school. But I'm bright enough. I'm wasted here. I mean, I can't be a bloody waitress all my life. I can't get a degree in waitressing. I can't go on University Challenge reading menus. What Jamie was doing for me, as well as being my lover, was educating me. I'd never wanted to read before, but he schooled me in it, sitting here talking about the great writers. But it was a curious kind of schooling, all done through a drunken haze, a kind of second-hand education in which I picked up on the enthusiasm but only half picked up on all the facts. Half remembered names and titles. There's nothing like walking into a bookshop in Belfast and asking for Dr. Chicago by Doris Pasterneck."
"It's easily done . . ."
"Or The Day of the Jack Russell."
"Well, I . . ."
"A Pitcher of Dorian Grey. The list goes on. What I want to do well is write. Write my book."
"You've started?"
"A thousand times."
"It's hard, isn't it?"
"You've tried yourself?"
"Many's a time. I wrote a novel once, sent it off to a publisher. They kept it. Sent me back a copy of the Northern Ireland telephone directory, said it had marginally fewer characters and a better plot. I haven't written much since then."

Of Wee Sweetie Mice and Men by Colin Bateman (Arcade Publishing 1996)

"You know," said McClean, "I saw this for the first time way back in sixty-nine when I was at Queens University. It had been around for a good few years then, like, but we had this cinema club, a real fleabag joint. A brilliant film, brilliant, I was really enjoying it, but I couldn't for the life of me understand why David Lean had this little black bush in the bottom corner of every frame. It intrigued me for the whole of - what was it - three hours? This was the late sixties, like, the age of experimental film. I had dreams of being a filmmaker myself."
"A bit different from insurance, eh?" said McMaster.
"Yeah, well, boyhood dreams. But I thought Lean was such a master. I mean, there he was with this epic picture, millions and millions of dollars to make, looked like heaven, yet he has the balls to put a little black bush in the corner of every frame. I spent ages trying to work it out, the symbolism, the hidden meaning. It was a real enigma. Then it was over, the lights went up, and there was this bastard with a huge Afro sitting in the front row." He shook his head. "I should have killed him."

Divorcing Jack (1998)

Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman (Arcade Publishing 1995)

"I don't think it would be a good idea to call the police."
"Why?" He stared into my face. "We've just been shot at. We could be dead." His eyes narrowed suddenly. "You think they were the police?"
I shook my head. "They were Protestant paramilitaries."
"Protestant? How can you tell?"
"Two ways, really. One: they fucked up. Proddies have a habit of fucking up operations like this. They outnumber the IRA ten to one but couldn't organize a piss-up in a brewery. Correction. They usually do organize a piss-up in a brewery before they try anything and that's why they fuck up."
"And two?"
The skinhead who shot at us. He had FTP written on his head."
"FTP. Tattooed? What's it mean?"
"No, just written. Like with a felt pen. It stands for Fuck the Pope. It's a dead giveaway. Actually, they're improving. Usually they can't spell FTP."

The Day of the Jack Russell by Bateman (Headline 2009)

It was the Tuesday before Christmas Day when The Case if the Cock-Headed Man walked into No Alibis, the finest mystery bookstore in all of, um, Belfast.

In some ways he was lucky to get me, because with business being so quiet I had resorted to letting my mother woman the till for that short part of the day when she could manage to keep off the booze, i.e. between the hours of nine and eleven twenty-nine in the morning. If he had walked in ten minutes earlier he would have walked straight out again, because while still undoubtedly sober, Mother is not one for suffering fools or anyone gladly and she's gotten ten times worse since her stroke. She has always been ugly and mean, but she used to restrict her glares and tempers and violence and sarcasm to members of her immediate family, but since the stroke she has expanded her circle of viciousness to include distant cousins, vague acquaintances, most other members of the human race and several dogs. Mother is wired differently to you or me. A stroke usually affects just one side of the body, but she has lost the power in her right leg and left arm, making her appear lopsided from whatever angle you care to look at her, although most people don't, and stagger from side to side like the drunk she is when she tries to walk. It is funny to watch her. When she's drinking she now only has to consume half as much as before to get legless. And half of that again usually drools out of her mouth on to her blouse, because another side effect of the stroke is the loss of all feeling in her lower lip.

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.