A Supreme supermacist

Colin who? It seems incredible that an Irish writer could be turning out thrillers as racy, pacy and downright funny as this …

Colin who? It seems incredible that an Irish writer could be turning out thrillers as racy, pacy and downright funny as this one without having his name shouted from the roof-tops; or from the top of theEmpire State Building, which is where this hugely enjoyable novel reaches its showdown. An Irish security man called Nathan Jones (yes, as in the Supremes song, and just try reading this without having that song bounce around in your head every time you turn a page), a white supremacist so extreme that even the Ku Klux Klan don't want anything to do with him, and an American President with both a brain and a sense of humour, are the unlikely trio at the centre of the action, which rockets along at a helter-skelter rate. If Bateman's two earlier novels, Divorcing Jack and Of Wee Sweetie Mice And Men, are anything like this, we won't be asking "Colin who?" for much longer.

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace

Arminta Wallace is a former Irish Times journalist