Papercuts Books in Order

Papercuts is a series of short, sharp crime novellas that return Bateman to his home turf of Bangor and to another corner of the media world. At their centre is Rob Cullen, a once ambitious London journalist whose career and enthusiasm have both stalled by the time he flies home for the funeral of his old mentor, editor of the local paper the Bangor Express.

The Express has survived world wars and the Troubles without missing an issue, but the modern world of shrinking adverts and online news has left it close to collapse. Rob is meant to pay his respects and get the first plane back to London. Instead, after a heavy night out and a rash promise, he finds himself agreeing to help the tiny remaining staff put an edition together.

From that starting point the Papercuts stories throw Rob and his new colleagues into a string of front page crises. The Express team is a mix of true believers, burnt out hacks and misfits who have nowhere else to go. Among them is young reporter Alix, whose drive and temper often push the paper into stories that bigger outlets have missed or ignored.

In The Dead and the Quick Rob discovers that small seaside towns can produce big crime when a supposedly routine day's work spins into armed robbery, arson and a trail of secrets that runs under the promenade. The Return of the Native shifts the focus toward Alix as she pursues the man responsible for a child's death in a drunk driving incident and discovers how easily the desire for justice can slide into revenge.

Later novellas continue to blend absurdity and anger. Each one centres on a new investigation for the Express, from scandals that start with a silly press release and spiral out of control to stories that expose how immigration raids, people trafficking or petty corruption actually feel on the ground. Rob's own uneasy status as the prodigal son who fled Bangor but cannot quite stay away gives the series a bittersweet edge.

Stylistically Papercuts feels like a television dramedy broken into prose episodes. Scenes move fast, jokes land hard and then are undercut by a sudden moment of violence or sadness. Bateman uses the collapsing local paper both as a backdrop for madcap plots and as a way to talk about what communities lose when they lose their reporters.

Because each novella tells a complete story, you can drop into the series almost anywhere. Reading in order, though, lets you watch the Bangor Express crew change as they lurch from one crisis to the next.