Mystery Man

I found this compulsively readable and almost equal parts funny and cringe. The Man with No Name who runs No Alibis, a crime fiction bookshop in Belfast, is a walking bundle of neuroses, and it was distressing how many of those I could relate to. (The sheer number of everyday things that the Man nopes out of, I have noped out of at least once in my life with precisely the same sort of self-protective anxiety.) It’s definitely a darker brand of humour but not darker in terms of crime: it’s mostly a puzzle sort of crime with a reasonably low body count. I would read another book in the series if I could get a hold of it.

The unnamed narrator of Mystery Man owns a crime fiction bookshop in Belfast, No Alibis: Murder is Our Business, and when the private detective next door disappears his clients make their way into the bookstore for assistance. Having something of a lack of clientele our mystery man successfully tackles an investigation into the search for some sexy leather pants presumed filched by a dry cleaner. This proves to be the start of a whole new career for him and he is soon joined by a quirky sidekick to solve The Case of the Dancing Jews.

Our mysterious narrator is a cross between Adrian Monk and Bernard from Black Books (though he’s not a drunk). He is afraid of just about everything and has a number of compulsions including the need to show more scratch any car that has a personalised number plate with a nail he keeps specifically for the purpose. As a retailer he is unlikely to garner untold riches as his ‘strategy’ encompasses sentiments like

“I see the need to attract customers into the store, I just don’t often feel the want”

and

“I like to think the atmosphere in the store is finally balanced between the pull-up-a-chair-and-peruse-from-our-books-for-nothing Borders and the reading room at Guantanamo Bay”.

The story is a satire on the crime fiction genre. If you have never read a crime fiction novel in your life you will in all likelihood not find it humorous. I don’t mean this to be patronising but some of the negative reviews I read seem to have been written by people who have never read a single work of crime fiction and their incomprehension interpreted as criticism seems a little unjust. If you have at least dabbled in mysteries then you should enjoy the satirical elements of the story as well as the way the narrative weaves in commonly held gripes of the genre’s aficionados. For example when asked whether the new James Patterson is in, our bookseller responds

“Sir, I replied with suitable haughtiness, because I know my onions, the old James Patterson isn’t in. This is a James Patterson-free zone. Once we begin stocking Pattersons we’ll have no room for anything else. We may as well change the name of the shop to Patterson Books”.

Of course natty one-liners aren’t enough to sustain a whole book but fortunately there is a jolly romp of a mystery here too. The main case has dead bodies a-plenty, possible Nazis and even a car chase which is no less dramatic because it turns out to have been completely unnecessary. It is satisfactorily resolved with a modern twist on the traditional dénouement (one is forced to ponder what Hercule Poroit might have made of PowerPoint) and a humdinger of a cliff hanger.

Funny-ness is such a subjective thing. Loads of people told me that David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day would make me laugh ‘til I hurt but I abandoned the book at the half-way point without ever cracking a smile (and I grizzle to this day about having spent $22.95 on it). So I’m not going to tell you this book will make you laugh. All I’ll say is that it made me become the latest crazy giggling lady on my city’s public transport and I think you’d be daft not to at least sneak a peek at the first couple of short chapters in your local bookshop. If it is your kind of humour then there is lots of it and reading the book will make your day. show less

This is a humourous yarn about a mystery bookshop owner in Belfast who took on some private detective jobs when the PI next door went missing. An occasional lost dog, or lampshade was one thing but murder was another. The sleuth, who remains unnamed, is a neurotic, paranoid, hypochondriac whose mother - or does he even have a mother? He is besotted with the girl from the jeweller's shop across the road who pushes in as his sidekick. The ribald humour is typical of Belfast, a city that can still laugh even through their "Troubles" - which, by the way, do not figure in this story. An unrealistic bit of fun that is hugely entertaining.

Mystery Man by Colin Bateman is the first book in his series about the owner of an Irish book store that specializes in mysteries who also takes on the duties of a private investigator for some clients. It started when the private investigator next door to the bookshop disappeared and his clients appealed to him for help. I have read Bateman before so was quite aware that his books are always darkly funny and full of satire so I was prepared for the many laugh out loud moment that this book provided.

Our main character is a whiny hypochondriac with OCD and still lives at home with his mother. Surprisingly, he has a crush on the pretty girl who works in the jewellery story across the street and actually manages to start a relationship show more with her. His cases start off simple, having to track down a pair of stolen leather pants or locate a missing girlfriend who disappeared after her boyfriend compared her ears to jugs. But the cases take a very serious turn when he finds himself surrounded by murdered victims and looking for Nazis.

I thoroughly enjoyed this first book and have already picked up two more for the future. I am looking forward to the humorous literary references, the outlandish cases, and the many twists and turns that this author provides his readers. show less

Quite funny with a very quirky narrator. The narrator is the owner of a mystery book store who starts investigating small cases when the P.I. next door closes his business suddenly. He gets involved in a case that might involve murder which is really too much for this paranoid, hypochondriac wants to handle. Sometimes I just wanted to shake the narrator but the voice is strong, clear, and FUNNY!

I almost dropped a star b/c it ends on a cliffhanger. Right after the narrator talks about how he hates when mysteries end on a cliffhanger.

My mystery book group met this past Saturday to discuss Mystery Man by Colin Bateman. It was a good discussion, as always, about a book that struck me as strange. The book didn’t quite come together for me, but it was very funny, at least in places, and kind of a puzzle to think about. What made it so odd was the fact that it’s written in first person from the point of view of a man who is mentally disturbed, to one degree or another. It’s a little hard to tell just what’s going on with him because, of course, he’s the narrator and we get no other perspective on the story. This made reading the book as uncomfortable as it was amusing.

The narrator is strange, paranoid, and often kind of nasty, although this is presented in a show more funny way. He lives in Belfast and owns a mystery book shop, and he’s the kind of guy who sells a customer a map when they ask for directions, even though he could easily point the way. He needs to make money after all. And there are scenes like this one:

"So he gave me their number and said they were on the Newtownards Road and I thanked him for his time and still suitably enthused, or bored, I was about to phone them when the shop door opened and a man came in and asked if I could recommend the new John Grisham and I said, yes, if you’re a moron."

It’s enough to make me wonder how in the world this guy (unnamed) ever keeps a bookstore open. His methods of drumming up business involve hosting events like Serial Killer Week, and inviting the famous author Brendan Coyle to teach creative writing classes. Coyle is a local author of literary fiction who “dabbles” in crime writing every now and then (and could be, as Emily points out, John Banville/Benjamin Black):

"He is a vain, boorish snob, and sometimes I wonder why I ever bothered inviting him to teach a monthly creative writing class in No Alibis.

Then I remember that it’s because he does it for nothing and that I also sell a lot of books off the back of his visits. The only reason he does it for free is that I convinced him that he should be giving something back to ‘his’ people, and he was sucker enough to fall for it. I like to think that every minute he spends talking twaddle in No Alibis in one minute fewer spent trying to write crime, which is a blessing for us all."

Read the rest of the review at Of Books and Bicycles. show less

Lets get the rant out of the way before the review. Bateman? Bateman!? This book wasn't written by Tom, Dick or even Harry Bateman you see, it was written by, well, Bateman. The writer and his publishers have gone out of their way to obliterate any mention of his first name from the book's cover, spine and author bio. Is the mysterious Mr Bateman (Colin as it turns out) really so well known that he can get away with using just one name, a la Madonna or Cher? Or is the no first name ploy a misguided attempt to add an air of mystery to the man behind a book which is, after all, itself a mystery? I suspect we'll never know, but for me the sooner Bateman locates his missing Christian name the better.
Anyway, now that I've got that off my show more chest I'd like to say that I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Mystery Man is the tale of the neurotic owner of a Belfast bookshop specialising in detective stories who ends up doing some detection of his own. When the private eye in the office next door fails to open up one day, the owner of the No Alibis book store takes on some of the detective's clients. Soon he has a whole host of mysteries of his own to solve - including the fate of the missing private eye. Yes, you can see some of the jokes coming, but the writing is nicely tongue-in-cheek and there are some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments.
A good read for anyone who likes comic fiction, detective thrillers or both. show less