Colin Bateman has 11 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 3 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.5★ across 4 ratings. The most-rated is Driving Big Davie.
Turbulent Priests
Summary
Dan Starkey arrives on Wrathlin Island to investigate the residents' belief that the Messiah is alive, female, and about to start school there: It's not a commission that turns up everyday. He finds a mess of religious intolerance and illicit drinking in a tiny community that is big on religious fervour but small on hospitality. Apart from the Messiah's mum of course, who's clung to her sanity. And her lager.
©1999 Colin Bateman (P)2014 W F Howes Ltd
Fire and Brimstone
Summary
A media billionaire’s daughter disappears following a massacre at a Belfast student party and nobody knows if she has been kidnapped or caught in the crossfire. A controversial new abortion clinic is firebombed, and a fire-and-brimstone church movement is blamed. Hired to both find the missing daughter, and prove the church’s guilt, Dan Starkey suddenly finds himself struggling to cope with two very different investigations...or could they possibly be connected?
©2013 Colin Bateman (P)2013 W F Howes Ltd
Driving Big Davie
Summary
For many years Dan Starkey has been a journalist of some repute - mainly ill. Now he is back with his wife Patricia, and while they try for a baby, he is aiming to keep himself out of trouble. Had he not been caught in a rather awkward position when he received a phone call from Big Davie Kincaird, he might not have decided to return to the village of Groomsport. And had he not drunk too much in order to cover the awkwardness of seeing this friend he hasn't known for 25 years, he might not have found himself agreeing to go on honeymoon...in Florida...for three weeks...with Big Davie. What else could possibly go wrong?
©2004 Colin Bateman (P)2005 W F Howes Ltd
The Day of the Jack Russell
Summary
The Small Shop Keeper With No Name is back. Hired to find the vandals responsible for spraying graffiti on an insurance magnate's advertising hoarding, he soon finds himself battling to solve murders that echo in the corridors of power. With MI5 involved and everyone on the hunt for a missing Jack Russell, can our hero stay alive as well as keep his world renowned bookshop afloat?
©2009 Colin Bateman (P)2010 WF Howes Ltd
I Predict a Riot
Summary
Walter has a rubbish job, so has Margaret. But when they meet through a dating agency, neither is who they seem. Margaret's married for a start, and Walter's encounter with her husband, Billy, leaves him black and blue. Billy's a dodgy accountant for politician and racketeer Pink Harrison, who is about to come unstuck. Superintendent James Mallow is determined to nail Pink. Meanwhile Redmond O'Boyle, professional terrorist and occasional birdwatcher, is languishing in a Colombian jail, and his only way out is to kill himself and trust in reincarnation.
©2007 Colin Bateman (P)2007 W F Howes Ltd.
The Dead Pass
Summary
Hired to find the missing son of retired political activist Moira Doherty, Dan Starkey knows his new case is going to be challenging. Billy 'the Bear' Doherty, a criminal with a nasty drug habit, isn't an easy man to find - his mum is convinced he's been murdered. But when Moira herself is killed, Dan finds himself in the middle of a deadly game of cat and mouse.
©2014 Colin Bateman (P)2014 W F Howes Ltd
Mystery Man
Summary
A superbly gripping and blackly funny mystery by the king of the comic crime caper. He’s the Man With No Name and the owner of No Alibis, a mystery bookshop in Belfast. But when a detective agency next door goes bust, the agency’s clients start calling into his shop asking him to solve their cases. It’s not as if there’s any danger involved. It’s an easy way to sell books to his gullible customers and Alison, the beautiful girl in the jewellery shop across the road, will surely be impressed. Except she’s not – because she can see the bigger picture. And when they break into the shuttered shop next door on a dare, they have their answer. Suddenly they’re catapulted along a murder trail which leads them from small-time publishing to Nazi concentration camps and serial killers.
©2009 Colin Bateman (P)2010 WF Howes Ltd
The Horse with My Name
Summary
Ex-journalist Dan Starkey is stuck in a grimy Belfast bedsit. His life is a disaster, and his only solace is the pub round the corner. He really, really needs something to get his teeth into. Fellow ex-journalist Mark Corkery provides that something. Corkery, an Internet horseracing gossip, wants him to investigate Geordie McClean, the man behind Irish American Racing. Simple enough for a man with Dan's experience, surely? But Trouble is Dan's middle name. And trouble is what he finds.
©2002 Colin Bateman (P)2003 W F Howes Ltd
Of Wee Sweetie Mice and Men
Summary
Fat Boy McMaster is a hopeless heavyweight boxer, who has somehow managed to become the champion of Ireland. His devious manager has set up a St Patrick's Day fight in New York against Mike Tyson, and he wants journalist Dan Starkey to write about it.Once in New York, however, McMaster's wife is kidnapped, the Champ is chased all over town by gunmen, and there's the Big Fight to consider too...
©1996 Colin Bateman (P)2013 W F Howes Ltd
The Prisoner of Brenda
Summary
When notorious gangster "Fat Sam" Mahood is murdered, the chief suspect is arrested nearby. But he seems to have suffered a breakdown. Incarcerated in a mental institution, he's known only as the Man in the White Suit. The suspect remains an enigma until Nurse Brenda calls on Mystery Man, Belfast's finest mystery bookshop owner, to bring his powers of investigation to bear....
©2012 Colin Bateman (P)2012 W F Howes Ltd
Papercuts
Summary
Through world wars and civil strife, the Bangor Express has never missed an issue, but now it is losing money, and Rob Cullen has absolutely no idea that he's the man to save it. It's been a long time since Rob had a real story to get his teeth into...just as well then that he can rely on the Express crew to back him up. They're like a family. A dysfunctional, highly unpopular and poverty-stricken family.
©2016 Colin Bateman (P)2016 W F Howes Ltd