The Day of the Jack Russell (2009) by Colin Bateman
Good Reads meta-data is 284 pages, rated 3.96 by 1272 litizens.
DNA: Ulster.
Verdict: More to come.
Tagline: [Woof!]
The man with no name is back, stumbling into the thick of it again. Hiding from the world in his bookshop where customers seldom venture and those few that do are driven away by his indifference or the vitriol his mother, who often fronts the shop, saves for…, well, everyone, he is suborned by a wad of black cash that Inland Revenue will never know about, to track down two yobbos who defaced a billboard featuring the smiling visage of a Freddie Laker. Much offended, this Freddie would like a stern word with them.
Identifying and finding them proves to be easy, but, well, no sooner does he report them to Freddie than the yobbos are topped. Gulp! Has he become an accessory before the gruesome facts? Plod certainly thinks so.
Nameless has no choice but to clear himself by finding the culprit(s). His pregnant on again off again girlfriend is recruited, his layabout sales assistant is conscripted, his poisonous mother gets in the way, and as they bounce around there is the dog. Everyone and I mean everyone seems to be after that Jack Russell, known as Patch: the Northern Ireland Police Service, MI5 and 1/2, Freddie, rival drug dealers, an IRA remnant, and the taxidermist. Yep, taxidermist.
It is almost a mile a minute, apart from innumerable asides about Nameless’s health, his dislike of everyone else, his cantankerous mother, his long suffering girlfriend, and lectures on etymology. While he can and will recite the definitions of ‘focus’ he cannot do it.
Moreover, there is little detecting, and just a string of lucky guesses. Still I enjoyed the sarcasm with a dash of cynicism.
This is a volume in the Mystery Man series that included Dr Yes which I commented on sometime ago. Click on for enlightenment.