- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: ARCADE PUBLISHING (Jan 1 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1559703784
- ISBN-13: 978-1559703789
- Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 13.1 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #2,188,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
The author of the well-reviewed Divorcing Jack returns with another side-splittingly funny, irreverent tale of violence in Northern Ireland. Miller, its antihero, is a smart-ass, hard-drinking bicycle-riding young journalist who gets banished from a busy Belfast daily (for being "over the top way out pissed as fuck stocious" drunk in the office) to a boring weekly in Crossmaheart, a rural terrorist hot spot. He's not immediately welcomed at the Chronicle, where his new colleagues bitterly inform him that it's "normal practice to wait until a body shows up before giving a man's job away." Jamie Milburn, Miller's predecessor at the Chronicle, has disappeared. Pursuing the mystery, Miller rides his bike, which he calls the "Cycle of Violence," falls in love with Jamie's gal, Marie, and investigates?and possibly precipitates?a real cycle of violence that hurtles to a fascinating, devastating finale. Bateman's forte is that, without directly addressing Northern Ireland's military/ paramilitary confrontation, the book is drenched and reeking with the pervasive violence and fear of a war-torn state. As the tale unfolds, lives splinter and explode as savagely as the bombs that rock Main Street. This horror is cleverly framed with the blinding sparkle of dark Northern Irish wit?humor so black that it will have readers chuckling even while it reveals the dreadful realities that laughter pretends to camouflage. We probably learn more about life in Northern Ireland from this brilliant, often hilarious novel than from a year of Sunday magazine specials. (May).
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Library Journal
Despite a cutesy title (the hero's eponymous bicycle), Bateman's second novel following Divorcing Jack (LJ 11/1/95) is a story of death by disease, terrorism, murder, abuse, and suicide, salted with gallows humor. The novel opens with the death of the father of a Northern Irish journalist named Miller. When his drunkenness results in a demotion to a newspaper in the Belfast suburb of Crossmaheart, Miller finds that his predecessor, Milburn, has disappeared. When he also finds that Milburn's sensuous but withholding girlfriend Marie was apparently a victim of gang rape as an adolescent, he becomes her instrument of revenge, either inadvertently or subconsciously. In Bateman's Northern Ireland, violent death and personal corruption blow in the wind like the acrid odor of spilt beer, while many people simply try to find a bit of clean air to breathe. Miller's extraordinary aptitude for personal survival and Bateman's witty dialog turn this relentless, dark vision into a beacon of redemption.?Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
cheeky Ulster humour blended with an interesting plot..,
By lazza (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Cycle of Violence (Hardcover)
One literary critic describes Colin Bateman as Ulster's (Northern Island's) equivalent of Carl Hiaasen. Being a fan of Hiaasen I can see his point. Bateman has a way of delivering great satiric humour is his (relatively) light mystery novels. But unlike Hiaasen, he doesn't seem to be overly negative and bitter (..sometimes Hiaasen seems to hate most everything).In Cycle of Violence we have the story of newspaperman being exiled to a rather nasty outpost (a town called Crossmaheart) to cover the usual reports of rape, murder and gang warfare. He is actually filling a post left vacant when some ambitious journalist disappears and is presumed dead. Things get interesting when he by chance develops a relationship with the missing journalist's girlfriend, and he discovers this woman has a rather bizarre past (, present ... and the future seems dubious too). Bottom line: a funny, breezy read. I hope its USA publishers decide to issue it in paperback. It's every bit as good as Bateman's earlier (and more famous) Divorcing Jack.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The book keeps you interested from beginning to end.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cycle of Violence (Hardcover)
Colin Bateman has a simple way of thinking: He can take you wherever he wants if you want to go along. Death or "The Angel of Death" is a central character in this novel. It keeps you waiting, it keeps you feeling, but above all, it keeps you thinking. It's hard to say weather we are capable of having a political view.In this book, what matters is What is personal? and What is social? This division makes the whole story worthwhile.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Nothing like the rest of his work,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cycle of Violence (Hardcover)
I've read all of Bateman's work, and this is the palest of the pale. Takes much longer to get into, and you're left with a disappointing taste in your mouth after the investment put into getting through it. I'm always entertained by the randomness inherent in Bateman's work, but in this one, much more so than the others, the randomness is used to cover bad plot holes and lacklustre characters. If you're reading chronoligically, skip over this one and come back to it when you wistfully realize there's nothing more available (yet!). If you're looking for "good" bateman, look for Divorcing Jack or Empire State, give this one a miss.
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