Colin Bateman Books in Order

The second Papercuts story focuses on young reporter Alix as the drunk driver who killed her friends' child is released from prison. Covering the story for the Bangor Express, she and Rob Cullen find themselves edging from journalism into revenge with consequences neither can fully control.

In one of the later Papercuts tales, yet another crisis in Bangor threatens to finish off the already battered Bangor Express. Rob Cullen, tired but still stubborn, scrambles to hold together his dwindling crew long enough to break one more important story.

The Bangor Express team tackle another supposedly routine story that splits opinion in the town and inside the newsroom. As tempers flare and secrets surface, Rob Cullen has to decide how far the paper is willing to go to expose the truth without destroying itself.

When a minor local event goes catastrophically wrong, the Bangor Express is first on the scene and suddenly at the centre of a national story. Rob Cullen juggles pressure from owners, officials and grieving families while trying to keep his small staff and their shaky paper intact.

Papercuts collects Rob Cullen's manic return to the Bangor Express, gathering his short newsroom crime novellas into one volume. Armed robberies, arson, revenge plots and small town scandals collide with black humour as the little paper fights to stay alive and relevant.

Another Papercuts episode finds Rob Cullen and the Bangor Express chasing a new front page story that starts small and quickly grows claws. Between office feuds, awkward interviews and a scandal that refuses to stay buried, the local paper once again bites off more than it can chew.

In this short Bangor based caper, an apparently lightweight assignment for the Bangor Express develops unexpected teeth and international echoes. Rob Cullen and his colleagues lurch between farce and real danger as they try to keep up with events and still get the paper out on time.

This Papercuts instalment unfolds over one sweltering afternoon as a simple human interest piece spins into a siege, a kidnapped pet and an almighty headache for the Bangor Express. Rob Cullen has to improvise fast if he wants headlines instead of obituaries.

In the first Papercuts novella, jaded London journalist Rob Cullen returns to Bangor for his old editor's funeral and is talked into helping the struggling Bangor Express for just one day. That single shift explodes into armed robberies, arson and a crash course in how dangerous a sleepy seaside town can be.

Dan Starkey travels to Derry when veteran activist Moira Doherty hires him to track down her missing son Billy, a violent criminal with a drug problem. When Moira's body is later pulled from the river beneath the Peace Bridge, Starkey is dragged into the city's porn and drug underworld and a very personal vendetta.

Eddie Malone's newborn half brother disappears and his search leads him to a gang nicknamed the Seagulls, immigrants blamed for bringing a vicious new drug called Crush into Belfast. Trying to find the baby forces Eddie and his friends to confront both the dealers and the prejudice swirling around them.

Shock jock Jack Caramac's four year old son is kidnapped for exactly one hour and returned unharmed, a warning rather than a ransom job. Dan Starkey, now calling himself an upmarket private eye, is hired to find out who is behind it and soon runs into drug dealing paramilitaries and burning houses.

A media billionaire's daughter vanishes after a massacre at a Belfast student party, and Dan Starkey is hired to find her. At the same time he is asked to prove that a fiery religious movement is behind an arson attack on a new abortion clinic, only to suspect the two cases may be linked.

When notorious gangster Fat Sam Mahood is gunned down, the main suspect is arrested nearby and then appears to suffer a breakdown, becoming known only as the Man in the White Suit. Nurse Brenda asks Belfast's most reluctant bookseller detective to investigate, leading to a tangle of mob grudges, institutional secrets and ancient curses.

In the second Titanic 2020 adventure, Jimmy Armstrong and Claire go ashore to report for the ship's newspaper and are stranded when the liner departs. With most of humanity dead from the Red Death, Jimmy must travel down a ruined coast toward the next port, facing desperate survivors and rumours of cannibal gangs.

On what is meant to be a training trip in an African savannah reserve, Michael and Katya join a group of privileged teenagers under ex commando Calvin Hunter. Their job is to protect a future king and learn survival skills, but ivory poachers and a far deadlier enemy crash the camp.

Teenage orphan Michael Monroe is expelled from his boarding school after accidentally burning it down, then becomes a hero when he helps rescue classmates from a sinking bus. Recruited by environmental rescue group SOS, he is sent to the Arctic to find a missing climate satellite and ends up stranded in a blizzard with wolves, gunmen and a gigantic polar bear for company.

Now a full member of SOS, Michael Monroe travels with fellow teen agent Katya to a small Pacific island where earthquakes hint that a long silent volcano is about to erupt. Tasked with bringing fresh water and finding a missing scientist, they are caught between bandits, villagers and the mountain waking beneath them.

As impending fatherhood looms, the hypochondriac hero of the Mystery Man series is asked to look into the disappearance of a crime writer's wife from the exclusive clinic of plastic surgeon Dr Yes. The case plunges him into a world of cosmetic obsession, madness and a particularly inventive serial killer.

In his second outing, the small bookseller with no name investigates obscene doctored billboards mocking a budget airline boss and the theft of the Chief Constable's stuffed Jack Russell. The petty pranks quickly escalate into a dangerous conspiracy that only someone with his pedantic eye might untangle.

The nameless, neurotic owner of Belfast crime bookshop No Alibis becomes an accidental private eye when the detective agency next door closes and its clients drift in. What starts as trivial jobs soon leads him and shop girl Alison onto a trail of killings that runs from modern dance performances to buried wartime secrets.

Writer Michael fell in love with Claire the day she dragged a porn shop owner from a shark attack, and years later watched her die in a bank raid. Returning to his home town a decade on to confront his grief, he glimpses a woman who looks exactly like Claire and is pulled into a mystery that rewrites their shared past.

In the year 2020, thirteen year old Jimmy Armstrong sneaks aboard the brand new luxury liner Titanic for a dare and ends up trapped when it sails. Ordered to work for the ship's newspaper as a stowaway, he reports on life aboard while an unstoppable plague called the Red Death tears through the world outside.

On the streets of post agreement Belfast, a failed blind date between security guard Walter and Primark worker Margaret collides with the schemes of corrupt politician and racketeer Pink Harrison, dogged detective James Mallow and ex terrorist Redmond O'Boyle. Their criss crossing stories build toward chaos that could spark a new wave of violence.

Back in London, undercover cop Martin Murphy is sent inside Confront, a support group for relatives of murder and rape victims that seems to have turned to vigilantism. As killers start dying, Murphy has to decide whether he is infiltrating a crime ring or people doing what the law refused to do.

After his friend Mouse, editor of glossy gossip magazine Belfast Confidential, is murdered, Dan Starkey reluctantly takes over the job. Mouse was compiling a list of the city's fifty most powerful people and Starkey becomes convinced that the names at the top will kill to stay off the front page.

Dan Starkey heads to Florida with his giant friend Big Davie, who has a spare honeymoon ticket and a broken heart. What starts as a sun soaked road trip turns into a violent quest for revenge that forces Starkey to confront grief, loyalty and how far he will go for a friend.

Runaway orphans Pat and Sean witness thieves stealing the preserved head of Saint Oliver Plunkett from a church and are determined to get it back. They rope in Eddie Malone and his albino friend Mo, dragging them into a wild chase involving rival gangs, a vicious criminal called Scarface Cutler and a very unusual hostage.

Twelve year old Eddie Malone moves with his mum to a rough Belfast estate beside a maternity hospital and keeps being accused of joining the local gang, the Reservoir Pups. When he stumbles on a plot to kidnap babies from the nursery, he decides to stop it himself, whatever the gang thinks.

Ivan Connor writes serious novels that no one buys and watches with envy as blockbuster authors cash huge cheques. After a throwaway commercial idea becomes a publishing sensation, he and his agent decide to fake a glamorous new identity, dragging in an actress, prison writing students and a multi million fraud they can no longer control.

Unemployed and separated from his wife, Dan Starkey is asked by failed bookmaker Mark Corkery to investigate racing tycoon Geordie McClean. The deeper he digs into the horse business, the more he uncovers crooked deals, old scores and threats that hit far too close to home.

Undercover Northern Irish policeman Martin Murphy is sent to London after failing a psychological assessment and carrying the trauma of his son's murder. His first case sees him infiltrate a North London funeral home that doubles as a front for ruthless diamond thieves.

Dan Starkey is hired by fading movie star Sean O'Toole, who wants to reinvent himself by directing a film about an infamous IRA killer. What should be a cushy job turns deadly as political enemies, old paramilitaries and the film's subject close in on both men.

When US Marines wipe out a terrorist training camp in Libya, they also orphan ten year old Mohammed Maguire. Flown back to Ireland, his mother's homeland, he becomes a public relations pawn for opposing sides in a conflict he barely understands, seeing the absurdity with a child's clarity.

Harry McKee used to be a loving husband, but he has turned into a sleazy local chat show host and serial adulterer whose family has had enough. After he is beaten up and collapses at his divorce hearing, Harry wakes from a coma thinking it is 1974 and realises he may have one last chance to fix his life.

Dan Starkey is sent by church authorities to a tiny island off the Irish coast to investigate claims that a young girl is the new Messiah. In a dry community full of secrets and simmering resentments, he finds miracles, media frenzy and very human motives.

Inspector Frank Corrigan has swapped the violence of Northern Ireland for quiet duty in Niagara Falls, where tourism and parking tickets fill his days. When a woman claiming to be a reincarnated Native American princess survives going over the Falls, he falls for her and ends up facing a notorious terrorist at a drug dealers' convention.

Nathan Jones flees Northern Ireland for New York after witnessing an IRA massacre, hoping to start over as a security guard in the Empire State Building. As a presidential visit looms, a white supremacist plot and his own damaged past collide at the top of the tower.

Best In The Business is an early stand alone novel from Colin Bateman, showcasing his trademark blend of sharp dialogue and offbeat crime. A fuller description for this title will be added here soon.

Dan Starkey is hired to ghostwrite the life story of Bobby "Fat Boy" McMaster, Ireland's heavyweight boxing champion, ahead of a big fight in New York. When McMaster's wife is kidnapped, Starkey must navigate gangsters, promoters and old grudges to keep everyone alive.

Set in Belfast during a tense election, Divorcing Jack follows drunken columnist Dan Starkey after a careless kiss leads to murder, blackmail and a political conspiracy. His attempts to save his marriage and his own skin fuel a fast, very funny crime caper.

Belfast journalist Miller is exiled to the hostile border town of Crossmaheart after a drunken outburst at work. There he investigates a missing reporter, falls for the man's girlfriend and becomes the prime suspect when people connected to her past start dying.