DAN Starkey is the creation of Colin Bateman, journalist turned successful comic thriller writer. Dan is a cynical, hard drinking, rakish, journalist of unionist hue.

A wise cracking hack turned unintentional sleuth who lands in more deadly scrapes than Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, involving republicans, loyalists, and even, believe it or not an Alliance party politician with a shady past.

After a hard session in Lavery's back bar in Belfast it's nothing for Dan to amble off to the Holyland for further carousing, three six packs of Harp under his oxter, half intent on snogging with a young woman, not his wife, "whose eyes are close together but not so close as to suggest Catholicism This last bit is said with a sardonic twist so don't get the wrong impression.

Still, Dan is something new on the literary landscape, an offbeat unionist hero, a lower life version of Spade and Marlowe translated from Hollywood, USA, to Hollywood, North Down, so to speak, who motors of Harp lager, Strongbow cider when there's nothing else available, and punk music.

Bangor, North Down is where Dan's creator, Colin Bateman resides. I met him for lunch on his 34th birthday in Legend's bar and grill in Bangor town centre. Outwardly, Colin is the antithesis of Starkey. He's reserved, self effacing, faithfully married to the inspirational Andrea. Son Matthew is a very recent arrival.

There's an obvious hint of alter ego in Dan, a hero - in two of Bateman's three published novels, Divorcing Jack and his most recent novel, Of Wee Sweetie Mice And Men. "Oh there's definitely some of the younger me in Dan," says Colin, recalling binges in Lavery's and mad parties later in the Holyland, a studenty area of south Belfast, so called after the street names - Jerusalem Street, Palestine Street, Damascus Street.

At Legend's, Colin sipped nothing stronger than Diet Coke, to which he is addicted - as is his hero Starkey on the rare occasions when he's giving the booze a miss. It was a busy day, so there were no plans to tear into the six packs. That evening Colin had to supply the BBC with a draft of a 20 minute play called Jumpers, and there was also a serious five a side soccer engagement. All in a day's work.

"Is Jumpers funny? Well it's funny, if you think suicide is funny."

He's also busy scripting film versions of Divorcing Jack and Of Wee Sweetie Mice And Men. He has two more novels written, The Crucifixion, starring Dan Starke again, and Empire State, set in New York. He has just sold a feature film script, Bring Me The Head Of Oliver Plunkett.

Colin is also writing a detective series, and there are more film and television scripts in the late stages of gestation. So, isn't he afraid of burn out? "When it comes, it comes," he says. "When you have had as many rejection slips as I have you take everything that comes. Anyway I am enjoying every moment of this, and I still have plenty of ideas."

He has given up his previous day job as deputy editor of the Co Down Spectator in Bangor to concentrate on his more lucrative fiction writing. The two Starkey novels, and Cycle Of Violence - which features another journalist called Miller, despatched to the notoriously dangerous town of "Crosmaheart" in south Armagh - have all been best sellers, winning rave reviews.

"Fast paced, very black and very funny: Roddy Doyle meets Carl Hiaasen," was the Independent on Sunday's verdict. "Will do for Belfast and south Armagh what Bram Stoker did for Transylvania, said the RTE Guide. "As sharp as a pint of snakebite," said the Sunday Times. And more in similar laudatory vein.

Bateman always had a hankering to be a writer. His novels and his laddish style evolved from a weekly off the wall column he wrote for the Co Down Spectator. "I used to write the gossip column, but I wasn't interested in gossip, so I just made it all up. That was the spingboard for my fictions."

Like most journos Colin places great faith in the sharp intro: Of Wee Sweetie Mice And starts: "Peace had settled over the city like the skin on a racid custard. Everybody wanted it, just in that form. The forecast remained for rain, with widespread terrorism."

Two women have been great influences in Bateman's career. The first was Annie Roycroft, former editor of the Co Down Spectator, now retired and living in Cork. Seems Colin was and is a great fan of the punk period. His first bylined article was about the Sex Pistols' album, which he described in his submitted article as Never Mind The ... Here's The Sex Pistols.

Roycroft asked him what the dot, dot, dot, business was about. "Well, I thought you couldn't write BOLLOCKS in the Spectator," said Colin.

"Yes, you can, if that's what it's called," said Ms Roycroft, which is how the review of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols appeared in unabridged and unexpurgated form in the local newspaper. "I haven't looked back since," said Colin, as is evident from the racy language in his novels.

While punk is the musical love of his life, Colin was too conservative for the business of Mohican haircut and bondage trousers. As Starkey pompously tells the character Margaret in Divorcing Jack: "Punk was more an attitude than a look. That's what so many failed to understand about it." Says Margaret: "You mean your mum wouldn't let you dye your hair blue."

His wife, Andrea, was and is the second great influence. Either in full manuscript or in synopsis Colin sent Divorcing Jack to 50 publishers, all to no avail. Eventually Andrea asked him who was the biggest publisher he knew. Harper Collins, said Colin. She sent a copy to the firm, and the book was pulled from the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts by Nick Sayers, now Colin's agent, who loved it.

Harper Collins bought Divorcing Jack, and his other four books. The Crucifixion and Empire State will be published over the next two years, just when the public should be well acquainted with the other three works. "I couldn't have done it without Andrea," says Colin.

He has no pretensions about his work. He admires writers such as Dick Francis who have the stamina and discipline to produce a book a year. "I have the utmost admiration for people who can write a novel, even if it's a Mills and Boon. What I write is commercial fiction. Good quality commercial fiction, I hope. What I want is as many people as possible to read my work."

BATEMAN writes from the background he knows, the world of journalism and Protestant unionist society. He recalls as a youngster asking his late father for help in writing a school essay on how the two parts of Ireland could live in harmony.

"`Dig a big trench', my father told me." And he laughs. "But I am not a political animal. At the end of the day I am writing a story. I don't want people to say, `I am lad you are representing the Protestant community'. What I want them to, say is, that was a good laugh, that was a good read I am anti violence, I am anti hypocrisy. That's my line."