The Day of the Jack Russell by Colin Bateman

The Day of the Jack Russell Reviews

• 
  Algernon (Darth Anyan)

  [7/10]
  
  My reputation was clearly growing. Booksellers who use their expertise to solve baffling crimes are pretty thin on the ground. In fact, booksellers are pretty thin on the ground. Indeed, I am pretty thin on the ground, thanks to my diet, and allergies, and incurable diseases, and broken heart, and the economy.
  
  The Mystery Man is back. We still don’t know his name (it’s a first person narrative), but he can be found behind the counter at the “No Alibi” mystery bookshop in Belfast, ready to sell you a rare pulp from the golden era or to engage in some unorthodox private investigation.
  
  This is the second book in the series and, although it is written to be read easily as a stand-alone, I would recommend reading the first episode before tackling this one. There are simply too many references to past events and to secondary characters that would make more sense if you are already familiar with the setting.
  
  The smell of blood and innards and desperation was thick in the air, tobacco smoke clung to coats and beards, and puddles of vomit mixed with Guinness spillages to produce an odd moonwalking effect as we pushed through the crowds ...
  
  In case you are wondering, the description here is of a visit to a poetry reading evening. Mystery Man is not so keen on poets, who are, generally speaking, an extraordinarily wilful, selfish, egotistical, drunken, back-stabbing bunch of layabouts, and that’s just the published ones. . He is not so keen an anybody but himself actually, which is a major source of the jokes in the book. Which is still funny as hell despite occasionally making Mystery Man sound like he has a one track mind in need of a new comedy routine. As a hypochondriac psychopath, I compared him first to Norman Bates and Sheldon Cooper. I am now beginning too see some traces of Ignatius Jacques Reilly, in an anorexic Irish re-incarnation. It’s probably the first person narration and the fact that we get to meet Mystery Man’s mother. Finally!
  
  Books are like women. They can be hard on the outside, or they can be soft. They can be fat, they can be thin. They can be funny, they can be serious. They can be utterly demented. There can be lots of sex, there can be no sex at all. Some books might tease you along with the promise of sex but ultimately chicken out. Trying to read more than one at a time can be dangerous. And when you’re finished with a book, you can put it in a box in the attic.
  
  I’m sorta scared to find out what kind of stuff Mystery Man keeps in the attic. It’s a miracle that he managed to get such an enchanting and smart girlfriend like Alison. One of the great mysteries of life. Not that I’m complaining, because Alison and his part-time employee Jeff provide a very welcome relief from spending too much time inside our Mystery Man’s paranoid head.
  
  Alison was snoring gently, and I was thinking about what would happen if I pinched her nose. And covered her mouth. The head is so full of holes, and the ear, nose and throat are supposedly connected; you would wonder why it isn’t possible to breathe through your ears.
  
  If I haven’t said anything about the actual investigation, it’s because I consider the series to be character driven and more concerned with comedy routines than with the actual murders. I do find it clever the way Bateman pushes the story forward while allowing Mystery Man to go on a deranged rant on almost every page. His dialogues with Alison are also among the highlights of the episode.
  
  Less memorable is the investigation itself, one that starts from an initial case of street vandalism (The Case of the Cock-Headed Man) and morphs later into to a Big Government conspiracy. It all revolves around a missing Jack Russell terrier, and it ends explosively literally, at a funeral
  
  I was going to rate this an easy three stars for a fun holiday read with snappy jokes, but there are a couple of intriguing literary references that convinced me Bateman is a much better writer than his coarse humour would led you to believe. One is a mention of a British pastor, Ronald Knox, who wrote in 1929 ten commandments that every mystery story had to adhere to in order to not stretch the bounds of credulity. Mystery Man uses his Decalog like sailors on the sea use a compass.
  
  They are still pretty relevant, not only to crime fiction, but to the real, actual investigation of a crime. They hauled me back to the plausible when my inclination sometimes allowed me to consider that aliens or Romanians may be responsible.
  
  I would like to reassure Mr. Bateman that I Didn’t Do It!, although it is nice to find out that Belfast is interested in me and my countrymen. I also like the love of genre fiction that shines through the text, and I will recommend again John Dunning, like in the review of the first book of the series, for those who like bookseller gumshoes.
  
  I was no longer capable of being surprised at the lengths to which some people would go to befuddle me.
  But I laugh in the face of befuddlement.
  If anything, a lifetime immersed in the murky world of mystery fiction has perfectly equipped me for dealing with real-life shenanigans. There is scarcely a twist or turn even the most devious mind could conjure up that I have not already encountered between hard or soft covers.
  
  My last quote is one in thanks to the author for pointing me in the direction of Max Ehrman and his ‘Desiderata’. Peace!
  
  ‘With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.’
• 
  Karl

  “The Day of The Jack Russell” by Colin Bateman can perhaps be easily confused with another book with a similar title “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth. And this amazing cosmic coincidence does not end there. Both books are written by male authors. Both books have plots. However In May 2010, Colin Bateman won the Crimefest Last Laugh Award for his novel The Day of the Jack Russell and Forsyth did not, which leads me to believe the Bateman book is funnier than the Forsyth.
  
  This is the second book in the Mystery Man series which is comic and full of humor as well as literary references. The story begins when into the ‘mystery man’s’ Belfast book shop enters a man named Billy Randall who runs a low cost airline. He has been made fun of on YouTube by a couple of young men who have pornographically altered his features on an advertising billboard in town. Randall wants 'mystery man' to discover who the men are so he can deal with them. Also The stuffed dog (a Jack Russell) of the towns Chief Constable has been stolen.
  
  The ‘mystery man’ along with Alison (his now pregnant girl friend) and Jeff his lazy bookshop assistant and Amnesty International supporter, he investigates the crimes along with many trips to Starbucks.
  
  This is an excellent addition to the series and quite a fun read.
  
• 
  Sarah Goodwin

  Well, as with the last Bateman I read, this book was OK. It was funny, reasonably interesting, and actually made me laught out loud a few times.
  
  The problem with it, as with the last one, is that central mystery was over written, drawn out, and not particularly captivating. In Mystery Man, I loved the short, pithy cases at the start of the novel, and these were lacking from TDOTJR, so I was left with a rambling, over complicated 'mystery' that wasn't even properly solved, after all the investigating that I'd ploughed through. The three kidnappings (two of the same character) and various 'dangerous men' - there were at least three - a crime lord, a corrupt copper and a rogue MI5 agent, confused the plot so much that thought I knew what was going on, I didn't care that much. Too many elements, too many ingredients, and it all led to an unsatisfying end.
  
  The relationship between the protagonist and Alison was even more confused than in the last novel, and Alison herself comes off as bipolar or schitzophrenic.
  
  It gets points for being very very funny, but that's about it. The mystery element isn't that interesting, and I much prefered the smaller 'domestic' cases to the large, drawn out one in this novel.
• 
  Karen Charlton

  I adored the first novel in this series about the 'Mystery Man' who runs a crime fiction bookshop cum private detective agency in Belfast. And I picked up this next book in the series for some light-reading and distraction.
  
  Bateman does not disappoint. I got far, far more entertainment than I bargained for and had several uncontrollable, laugh-out-loud moments in embarrassing public places.
  
  The un-named main character is a wonderful cross between Sherlock Holmes and the autistic, fifteen year-old narrator in Mark Haddon's The Curious incident of the dead dog in the night. Supported by his enthusiastic girlfriend, Alison, and his long-suffering shop assistant, Geoff, our book-loving hypochondriac solves the mysteries of a double murder and the disappearance of a stuffed Jack Russell dog. He outsmarts the drug dealers, the Ulster Constabulary and MI6, while neatly side-stepping all elements of personal danger and possible infection.
  
  Bateman is an outstanding writer of comic novels - and he's pretty darned good at crime fiction too. A great combination. I can't wait to read the next one.
• 
  Baba

  The second in the series of the Mystery Man books, where the 'No Alibis', hypochondriac gets hired to find out who painted a cartoon phallus on a roadside advertising board and then linked it to go viral on the internet. As a result of this case Mystery Man gets caught up in a murder, where a stuffed Jack Russell seems to be the one thing that gangsters, victim's relatives, the police and the MI5 want! And despite sounding really funny, it is nowhere near as funny as the first and third books in the mini-series, although the banter between the main characters continues to be quite humorous. 3 out of 12.
  
• 
  Helen

  Okay, this is the second book in the "Mystery Man" series. It has been six weeks since our unnamed hero solved The Case of the Dnacing Jews. He has since started to build a reputation and is still solving small cases (as well as trying to sell his books at extortionate prices in his shop, No Alibis). However, work seem to have dried up and he is hardly getting any customers in his shop. That is until The Case of the Cock-Headed Man lands on his doorstep. Although that is solved quickly, Mystery Man soon finds himself in a mixture of double murder, conspiracy and why is everyine obsessed with that stuffed Jack Russell?
  
  Compared to "Mystery Man", I found this book frustrating. Bateman pulls us into the bizarre mind of Mystery Man so deep it is difficult to get out of. What seems to be a case of Norman Bates syndrome in the first book (a shy man with a few problems and a nasty mum), a new Mystery Man comes to light in this book: a seriously hypochrondriac with OCD and is very laddish. I mean, very laddish. He is in fact, very insensitive and quite shallow and callous.
  
  Still, this book is very darkly funny. You become drawn into the case wondering who did it but please, this is Mr Bateman. It is never simple when it comes to his crime fiction. This author really makes you think (when usually you can figure it out before the protagonost does). Bateman tries very hard to be clever but compared to "Divorcing Jack", it is quite a difficult read and comprehend but it is good. Very good. Go read now!
• 
  Gary

  I'm the first to admit that my appreciation of a book is affected by how I've enjoyed an author's previous works and I'll sometimes give a below par book the benefit of the doubt if I've found a previous story to be top notch - not so objective I know, but enjoying fiction is pretty subjective (unless you are studying literature for a qualification, so having said that... I've very much enjoyed Colin Bateman's earlier works and wait for it.... I also like this one! A lot actually. It's funny and a fast read that I rampaged through. It won't let you down if you've come across Bateman before but I'd say to read 'Mystery Man' before this one for continuity reasons.
• 
  Henry Sheppard

  As someone else said, "occasionally a little childish." What they were referring to was passages such as the following discussion between the Nameless Protagonist and his Pregnant Girlfriend:
  PG- "You're a miserable little shit."
  NP- "So's your face."
  PG- "That doesn't make sense."
  NP- "Neither does your face."
  PG- "You're a big baby."
  NP- "So's your face."
  PG- "Shut up."
  NP- "Shut up your face."
  And so it goes, for pages at a time.
  
  If you can tolerate that, there's a pseudo-Agatha Christie story as well, complete with dramatic unveiling of the murderer at a funeral, one which almost comes off, but not quite.
• 
  Doreen Dalesandro

  Genre: Mystery, humor
  I listened to this book.
  
  
  The Day of the Jack Russell is the first book by
  Colin Bateman that I've read. It will not be the last. I clicked with his sense of humor, which I enjoyed more than the mystery. Highly recommend!
  
  Stephen Armstrong does a great job narrating!
  
  Oh, and one last thing: So's your face ;-)
• 
  Erin Britton

  The Bookseller With No Name is back. Since he put his own first name to rest, Bateman’s quirky, black comedy crime novels, featuring often unwilling protagonists who, much to their indignation, found themselves thrust into all manner of peculiar situations, enjoyed a strong cult following and earned him a great deal of critical praise (the Daily Telegraph voted him to be one of the 50 Crime Writers to Read Before You Die). And then Richard & Judy picked Bateman’s Mystery Man to be a part of their 2009 Summer Read and things went big-time and supermarket friendly fast. Mystery Man introduced the crotchety, severely hypochondriac, generally personality bypassed and still unnamed proprietor of the No Alibis bookshop on Botanic Avenue, Belfast to the crime loving public. The eponymous Mystery Man was struggling to keep Belfast’s best known but least visited mystery bookshop afloat in troubled financial times and so found himself, against his better judgement, taking on cases originally destined for the AWOL private detective with an office next-door in order to stave off financial ruin.
  
  The Day of the Jack Russell finds our favourite consulting Bookseller firmly ensconced back behind his counter. No Alibis still seems to be about as favourable a prospect to Belfast’s reading public as asking to use the restroom at Black Books so the business is once again in the monetary doldrums. Even the local crimes, at least the ones he would be prepared to get involved with, seem to have dried up. Having to run an internationally renowned but criminally overlooked small business is difficult under the best of circumstances but when you factor in the challenges of employing moronic student and Amnesty International devotee Jeff as his (not so) able assistant, his stroke-afflicted harpy of a mother, his inconsiderately pregnant ex-girlfriend Alison and the complete lack of interest from loyal customers in his Christmas Club, it’s no wonder our man’s spastic colon is acting up. And then ‘The Case of the Cock-Headed Man’ walked through the door of No Alibis and into his life.
  
  Billy Randall runs a low-cost, no frills airline and holiday company that specialises in flying “the great unwashed to cheap destinations, many of them in the Third World, most of them permanently braced for natural disaster or constantly teetering on the edge of civil war or desperately trying to recover from a crashed economy”. Proud of being a self-made man, Randall has no compunction in proclaiming his greatness to the world and this, despite his attempts at exuding a cheeky chappie ‘man of the people’ image, has not endeared him to the Northern Irish public at all. Randall also takes himself very seriously and it is his tarnished dignity that brought him to No Alibis. Our Man Behind the Counter is not one to keep abreast of popular trends and viral Internet phenomena so Randall is forced to show him the offending YouTube video following two hooded youths as they use a set of decorators ladders to climb up an advertising billboard featuring the image of Billy Randall. One of the youths then takes “a can of spray paint from his hoody and [begins] to spray what slowly became an enormous cock and balls right in the middle of Billy Randall’s gigantic forehead”. Hence ‘The Case of the Cock-Headed Man’.
  
  Believing that it will prove to be a simple matter, our man agrees to leave No Alibis under the watchful eyes of Jeff (well, it’s not like they have many customers anyway) and track down the graffiti bandits for Randall. He’s not particularly bothered as to what Randall intends to do once the two have been identified. It certainly seems that the extreme confidence he has in the detective abilities that he has cultivated through reading thousands of good, bad and indifferent crime novels is justified as, with a bit of unwanted help from Alison, he soon manages to track down Jimbo and Ronnycrabs, the fugitive artists.
  
  Then things take the inevitable turn for the worse as our man finds himself up to his ears in intrigue and battling to solve murders which (possibly) echo in the corridors of power. With MI5 hovering about, the Chief Constable of Northern Ireland seeming to be suffering from explosive temper tantrums, a host of small-time villains and potential paramilitaries on his case and his mother and Alison at each other’s throats, the Bookseller must gird up his loins, battle through his allergies and solve the murders while at the same time trying to figure out just where the stolen Jack Russell fits into the whole mess.
  
  The Day of the Jack Russell offers an intriguing mystery spread over a plethora of bumblings, fumblings and zany events that cause plenty of laughs. The two novels featuring The Man With No Name are probably Bateman’s most comedic works to date and have been aptly described as Dashiell Hammett meets Raymond Chandler meets Father Ted. Perhaps understandably given this emphasis on humour, the central plot is not the most complex of mysteries but there are still enough twists, turns and McGuffins to keep even hardened mystery fans satisfied. The Mystery Man himself is certainly not a sympathetic character but he does provide wonderful narration and is a truly unique detective. From reading The Day of the Jack Russell it’s easy to see that Bateman had great fun flexing the conventions of the mystery genre and writing about writing and those who love and live through books. This sense of fun is reflected in an intriguing mystery that draws the reader in, keeps them laughing and guessing, but never takes itself too seriously. The Day of the Jack Russell is hugely entertaining and the perfect murder mystery to hide away with on a bleak winter’s evening.
• 
  Lipsy

  Like Mystery Man before it, this book made me Laugh Out Loud. At the train station, on the train, on the tube, in the pub...cracked me up and made me look like a mentalist in front of the general public. Brilliant!
• 
  donna_ehm

  2.5 stars
  
  I would have preferred this as a book but audio was the only version available in my library. Narrator Stephen Armstrong has the accent but does not, unfortunately, bring much more than that to the reading of the book. He doesn't do a lot to distinguish different characters so in scenes with more than two it could be difficult to keep track of who was saying what.
  
  I will give him this, though. Listening to Armstrong voice the unnamed protagonist, particularly when reciting the litany of things he finds objectionable - the endless lists of things to which he is allergic, his medical ailments, his dislike of basically everyone and everything - really drives home the reality of what it must be like for not just the character but also for anyone having to deal with him.
  
  It's easier when reading to slip past that, I think. You see more clearly how and when Bateman is pushing the character's issues to more of an extreme to highlight the absurdity of it all and get a few laughs. Bateman does a really good job playing up that side of the character while also depicting a man who is clearly mentally ill and overwhelmed by everything around him. Hearing the latter play out makes the reality of the character's issue harder to ignore or laugh at.
  
  It doesn't make the character any less aggravating, though. In fact, I wanted to reach out any number of times and just smack him right in the back of the head. Like, just shut up dude, for five minutes, please.
  
  This no doubt influenced how I reacted to the story itself. I confess to skipping through some parts because of the tangents the character could go off on, and I didn't have the patience at the time to listen to any more of his absurd ruminations. Bateman turns in a suitably layered plot but I agree with a few other reviewers who preferred the style of the first book wherein the longer main case was set against a few shorter ones. It was something a bit different that I think worked for the book as a whole, and I enjoyed the silliness and lighter tone of those cases. It was a nice way to just take a break from the main plot.
  
  And by the end of this book, I definitely needed a break from the character. I'll be sticking to reading the rest of this series.
• 
  Angela

  This is the first of Bateman's book that I have read, and despite not being the first featuring the bookseller with no name it was isn't enough to pick up. It was an enjoyable "listen" though I felt the actor reading the book could have made more of an effort to distinguish between the character voices. It became difficult at times to realize who was saying what. Other than that I enjoyed it, despite the main character being wholly unlikeable. Actually, none of the characters were. I've already adding Dr Yes to my list and hoping that maybe the voice characterization may have improved.
• 
  Hazel Bright

  Still funny, the main character's Irish take on Woody Allen grows a bit fatiguing in this second offering. And even as I read this one, I lost track of what was going on and even who was who. Not that I cared much. When I previously hit a "huh?" moment, I would go back and try to figure out what was going on. Not so much by the end of this one. I was ready to move on long before the book officially ended.
• 
  Jeff H

  This is a fun read. I couldn't fully get into the story mainly because of the main character and all his hypochondriac symptoms or other maladies that he kept talking about in first person during the story over and over and over again.
  
  This is the first book that I read by Bateman so maybe I just need to get used to his writing style.
  
  I still found it to be a fun read and humorous at times.
• 
  Lils

  BRILLIANT book - enjoyed every minute of it. Particularly enjoyed the further development of the main characters and the main guys detective skills and Colin Batemans writing style is so funny and unique. Only thing I'd say is the actual mystery and its resolution was kind of a bit less believable but still.Cant wait to read the next one in the Mystery Man series!
• 
  Doug Rawden

  Love his sense of humour
  
  The second in the Mystery Man series. Love the central character who you can never form a mental picture of as Bateman will always throw another ailment into the mix. Funny, clever and absorbing. Good book
• 
  Jennifer Shepard

  3.5. Fun mystery featuring a bookseller-sleuth, who owns a mystery bookstore. Great characters and unexpected ending.
• 
  Paul

  enjoyable dark humour. The book shop detective is back
• 
  Dane Divine

  So funny. I love his writing.
• 
  Martin Willoughby

  Dark humour. Fabulous.
• 
  Jenny King

  Just such good fun!
• 
  Karina Greenan

  Love these books. Dark comedy madness.
• 
  Mary

  I find this series very funny, but it is a dry wit. I'm not sure it is right for everyone.
• 
  Wanda

  Don't waste your money alert. The book put me in a bad mood. After I read this, I learned that this is part of the author’s Mystery Man series. Remind me not to pick up the other books in the series. A more disagreeable protagonist it would be difficult to find. Frankly, I don’t want any further exposure to this misanthropic narcissist.
  While curmudgeonly crime solvers have an honored place in English mystery genres (e.g. the prissy Poirot) there is something redeeming to be found in most of these characters. Poirot is a “putz” but he is something of a lovable putz. Nothing lovable about this guy – who by the way has no name. The book is supposed to mix humor with mystery and according to other reviewers the dialogue is funny and farcical. NOT. I see absolutely nothing funny in dialogue that consists of our “hero” complaining about his various hypochondriacal conditions or belittling and insulting pretty much everyone – including his love interest. If I read the phrase ‘So’s your face’ one more time, I thought I would throw the book out my window. As it was, I seethed at this juvenile repartee that was supposed to pass as humor.
  Even the guy’s mother, a cantankerous, paralytic harridan with a colostomy bag, hates his obnoxious guts.
  Amid these despicable characters, the least despicable of whom is the girlfriend, is supposed to be a mystery story. However, the mystery takes a while to get to, while the author is annoying us with junior high school insult and gratuitous sprinkling of four letter words and their compounds. The fact that this mystery unfolds in the middle of this farce is, I suppose, part of the “black” humor of the novel. To me, it was simply self indulgent and I resent that the author simply put one over on an audience that expected a real mystery story