Book Review: Belfast Confidential

Reviewed By: Catherine Thompson - RAM

[5 stars]

Belfast Confidential Amazon UK PB Amazon UK HC
Colin Bateman
Class/Genre: Mystery
Series: Dan Starkey
Headline, $24.95 trade paperback, 410 pages

Dan Starkey and his wife Patricia have no sooner moved into their new house than Dan’s old friend Mouse is murdered. Mouse was the editor of Belfast Confidential, an obscenely successful scandal magazine (think OK Magazine). Mouse’s widow, May Li, asks Dan to investigate her husband’s death and she offers him 49 percent ownership of Belfast Confidential, as well as the position of editor, to do it. Now Dan’s got to compile the much-coveted Power List edition of the magazine and find out who killed Mouse, and why. He’s thrown into the cutthroat world of local celebrity, contending with loony lifestyle gurus, artistic gangsters, washed-up footballers, and jet-setting owners of sports car factories. Worse, Dan begins to realize that his final deadline may be looming.

I’ve been a fan of Colin Bateman ever since I picked up Chapter and Verse a couple of years ago. Something I found particularly interesting is the relationship between Dan and his wife. They shout at each other, they insult each other, yet they’re still together and they still love each other. The relationship has a reality that you don’t often find in fiction. Patricia’s neither the long-suffering, patient wife nor the tightly wound, bound-for-divorce wife that seem to appear most often in crime fiction.

Belfast Confidential is everything readers expect of Bateman: funny, thrilling, and rude. His language leans towards the raw, but Bateman has that talent that God gave Irishmen to take the rudest words and make them somehow poetic. I also don’t recommend reading this book in public, because Bateman will definitely make you laugh, probably loudly and with snorting involved. Belfast Confidential is a great way to start off the New Year’s reading.

Catherine Thompson - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Catherine Thompson - RAM