Divorcing Jack

Sullo sfondo l'Irlanda e tutto ciò che l'IRA ha significato e significa.

In primo piano, le vicende di Dan Starkey, giornalista con un livello di sarcasmo pari soltanto al tenore etilico. Le giornate scorrono placidamente nella tranquilla devastazione, tra la rubrica che l'ha reso famoso, i pub e i dischi. O almeno così era fino all'arrivo di Margaret, studentessa universitaria che trascinerà - involontariamente - il celebre giornalista nel periodo più scalcagnato e disperato che la vita potesse riservargli.

Un libro essenziale per tutti gli amanti del cosiddetto Comedy thriller, dove il fascino etilico di Starkey e la sua irriverente personalità si mescolano alla perfezione ad una trama che non lesina su misteri, botte, crudeltà e show more ritmi tesi, impreziosita dai migliori cliché irlandesi e da intrighi politici che soffiano sulla suspance.


Come resuscitare il thriller e affogarlo magistralmente nel malto.
Applausi, o Bateman. show less

Divorcing Jack by Colin Bateman is the first in his series that features a witty Belfast newspaper columnist named Dan Starkey who excels at drinking and partying. One night at a party he is caught by his wife kissing another woman, and this misdeed leads him into a horrendous week of murder and politics with both the police, the IRA and the Loyalists all after him.

Divorcing Jack is a wonderful combination of Irish noir and black comedy with a highly likeable anti-hero as the main character. As he stumbles and bumbles his way around Belfast at the height of the Troubles he runs into gangsters, politicians and thugs and while not always entirely credible, the story is always entertaining.

I have had this book sitting on my shelves for show more more years than I care to count. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to finally start this series, but I will be continuing on with Starkey’s adventures in the near future. show less

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I picked this up at a Brussels literary event last year, at which Bateman himself spoke and autographed a couple of his works for me. I had previously read a couple of his thrillers set in Belfast, usually involving struggling journalists who get into political and criminal difficulties, though I don't think I had looked at any of them this century. Divorcing Jack is more political, but it is a slightly different politics to our time line, set in an alternate 1995 where the Alliance Party is about to win the elections and take power. (I read this bit with particular interest because in our timeline, the real Alliance Party's central Director of Elections in 1995 was, er, me; and we were show more struggling to hit the 6.5% we got in 1996, never mind win outright. A significant subplot revolves around the party's candidate for North Belfast, who in 1995-96, in our timeline, was, again, me; but Bateman's fictional McGarry had a much more successful political career than I did.)

As with the other Bateman novels I've read, the narrator is a journalist down on his luck. Here, his marriage is on the rocks, two other women appear on the scene, and he unleashes a criminal scandal which threatens to rock the political world to its foundations. Bateman's Northern Ireland is a small world. There is only one taxi driver in the whole of Belfast, apparently. The least credible element of this alternate Northern Ireland is that everyone at the top level of politics has known each other practically from childhood, and that the battles of young love are still being fought a decade or two later, along with all the other political battles. I do actually know of a couple of countries where this is a decent explanation of a lot of the political dynamics; but Northern Ireland, given its internal division and also relative permeability to outside influences, is not one of them.

But I'm far enough away in time and (usually) space to appreciate that not every detail of the fictional politics of Bateman's Northern Ireland needs to be convincing to make it an entertaining book; and it is an entertaining book - in particular, he catches the caustic Belfast wit very well, also showing how it can link to a cynical worldview where scepticism even of the apparently heroic is always justified. It's not a terribly attractive approach, but at least it means that, by assuming the worst in advance, you are more likely to get pleasant surprises than unpleasant surprises.

It's also striking, to a visitor from the 21st century, how much the plot of this book set in 1995 depends on old technology - the McGuffin is a cassette tape of which there is only one copy; when your spouse goes missing you have to call round all imaginable relatives and friends and ask if they know where your loved one is, because nobody has a mobile phone.

Anyway, it's of its time, but it brought me back to places which were very important to me once, and showed them to me from a different angle and in a different light. I don't know how well it would be received outside Northern Ireland - the humour is very local - and I'm not even sure how well it was received here - rather too close to the bone in some cases. But I liked it. show less

This guy just writes the funniest mysteries in the world. The two I have read have been excellent, interesting, and parts of them are just hysterical.

This is a very entertaining book by Colin Bateman an author from my hometown of Bangor, so a lot of place names and expressions well used here in Northern Ireland!! It is however for everyone, it is very funny and fast paced.
Dan Starkey is a journalist with a Belfast Newspaper, he is married to Patricia, both live a life packed with drink and parties. One night Dan meets Margaret, and in a drunken blur ends up having a one night stand with her, after Patricia throws him out. That is when the fun starts!, mystery is afoot as Margaret is murderd, but not before giving Jack a cassette tape and whispering Divorce Jack before she snuffs it!!
Dan ends up all over Belfast with all sorts of dodgy characters, wondering what the heck he has got show more himself into and whats it all about.
A very good read, lighthearted in a macabre sort of way!! You really should give it a go. show less

Lots of local colour for Belfast in this entertaining murder mystery. Dan Starkey stumbles through his mariage, an affair, the Belfast underworld, and Northern Ireland politics. A very good read.

I really truly wanted to like this book, but I kinda can’t stand the main character, and, perhaps even worse, I don’t find the quips humorous at all. I hate dropping books I’ve started, but life is too short to force myself through the rest of it. Abandoned.