Author Description

Product DescriptionThe author of the well-reviewed Divorcing Jack returns with another side-splittingly funny, irreverent tale of violence in Northern Ireland.From Publishers WeeklyThe author of the well-reviewed Divorcing Jack returns with another side-splittingly funny, irreverent tale of violence in Northern Ireland. Miller, its antihero, is a smart-ass, hard-drinking bicycle-riding young journalist who gets banished from a busy Belfast daily (for being "over the top way out pissed as fuck stocious" drunk in the office) to a boring weekly in Crossmaheart, a rural terrorist hot spot. He's not immediately welcomed at the Chronicle, where his new colleagues bitterly inform him that it's "normal practice to wait until a body shows up before giving a man's job away." Jamie Milburn, Miller's predecessor at the Chronicle, has disappeared. Pursuing the mystery, Miller rides his bike, which he calls the "Cycle of Violence," falls in love with Jamie's gal, Marie, and investigates?and possibly precipitates?a real cycle of violence that hurtles to a fascinating, devastating finale. Bateman's forte is that, without directly addressing Northern Ireland's military/ paramilitary confrontation, the book is drenched and reeking with the pervasive violence and fear of a war-torn state. As the tale unfolds, lives splinter and explode as savagely as the bombs that rock Main Street. This horror is cleverly framed with the blinding sparkle of dark Northern Irish wit?humor so black that it will have readers chuckling even while it reveals the dreadful realities that laughter pretends to camouflage. We probably learn more about life in Northern Ireland from this brilliant, often hilarious novel than from a year of Sunday magazine specials. (May).Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.About the AuthorColin Bateman was born in Northern Ireland in 1963, and began his writing career as a reporter for the County Down Spectator. Since then, he has authored 14 novels, 4 children’s books, and numerous short stories. Bateman also served as chief writer for the BBC series “Murphy’s Law.”From BooklistMiller, a raffish reporter for a Belfast newspaper, has been exiled to Crossmaheart, an Ulster town so violent it makes Belfast seem tranquil. He's there to replace a missing reporter who is presumed a victim of the troubles. Soon after his arrival, Miller falls in love with beautiful, troubled Marie, the missing journalist's girlfriend, and becomes a cog in the endless cycle of violence that afflicts Northern Ireland. Despite being stomped by Protestants and given a ridiculous perm prior to his scheduled execution by an IRA terrorist who is a hairdresser by day, Miller lurches ahead in his pursuit of Marie and his craft. Belfast journalist Bateman, the author of the highly regardedDivorcing Jack, has written a book that is hilariously, if mordantly, funny as well as profoundly tragic. He captures the wit, desperation, alcohol-fueled rage, and barely suppressed violence of a place that stumbles from one bombing to the next.Thomas GaughanFrom Kirkus ReviewsExiled to darkest Crossmaheart after a spectacular drunk, Miller, a Belfast reporter who has his own weekly column but keeps his first name secret, falls in with waitress Marie Young, falls in love with her, falls into her bed. But chastely, since Marie's still traumatized from her childhood rape by three young bloods who've long since paid for the crime and been forgotten. Miller, not the most patient or disinterested sexual therapist in the world, finds his job horrendously complicated by the fate of Marie's last lover, Jamie Milburn, his predecessor on the Crossmaheart Chronicle. Jamie hasn't been seen lately, unless you count his head, glimpsed in a fox's mouth. This last discovery is all too much for Marie, who goes off her medication and takes a powder instead. Miller, with nothing better to do, tracks down her three assaulters and has brief, informal exchanges with ea