Divorcing Jack - Softcover

Bateman, Colin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006510639 ISBN 13: 9780006510635

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1998

Synopsis

Fast, funny, scary. A truly up-to-the-minute novel set in Belfast from a brilliant new writer. Now a major BBC/Scala film starring David Thewlis and Robert Lindsay.

Dan Starkey is a young journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife, Patricia, a prodigious appetite for drinking and dancing. Then Dan meets Margaret, a beautiful and apparently impoverished student, and things begin to get out of hand. And then, terrifyingly, Margaret is murdered. Is it because of her liaison with Dan? Is it because she was not exactly who she claimed to be? Is it the IRA? A Protestant extremist group? A jealous lover? Before long, Dan is a target himself, running as fast as he can in a race against time to crack the mystery and save his marriage.

Crackling with the sharpest dialogue to be found outside of a Roddy Doyle novel, Divorcing Jack is a novel to be relished from a major new talent.

About this title

About the Author

Colin Bateman was born in Northern Ireland in 1962 and educated at Bangor Grammar School before joining the ‘County Down Spectator’, where he became the deputy editor until 1996. In 1990 he received a Journalist’s Fellowship to Oxford University for his reports from Uganda and has received a Northern Ireland Press Award for his weekly satirical column. He won the Betty Trask Award in 1994.

From the Back Cover

Dan Starkey is a young journalist in Belfast, who shares with his wife, Patricia, a prodigious appetite for drinking and partying. Then Dan meets Margaret, a beautiful student, and things begin to get out of hand.

Terrifyingly, Margaret is murdered and Patricia kidnapped. Dan has no idea why, but before long he too is a target, running as fast as he can in a race against time to solve the mystery and to save his marriage.

"A joy from start to finish…Witty, fast-paced and throbbing with menace, 'Divorcing Jack' reads like 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' rewritten for the '90s by Roddy Doyle"
TIME OUT

"Grabs you by the throat…a magnificent debut. Unlike any thriller you have ever read before…like 'The Day of the Jackal' out of the Marx Brothers"
SUNDAY PRESS

"Fresh, funny…an Ulster Carl Hiaasen"
MAIL ON SUNDAY

"Will do for Belfast and South Armagh what Bram Stoker did for Transylvania"
RTE GUIDE

A witty and fast-paced thriller (“like 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' rewritten for the ‘90s by Roddy Doyle”'Time Out'). Publication ties in with the release of the BBC film starring David Thewlis and Robert Lindsay.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0006510639
• ISBN 13: 9780006510635
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256