Transferred from the downtown Belfast newspaper to the beleaguered Crossmarket outpost, bicycling journalist Miller learns that he has replaced a missing reporter and finds more trouble when he falls for his predecessor's girlfriend.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling & Funny,
By
This review is from: Cycle of Violence (Hardcover)
This brings back the nightmare of ordinary life in those dark areas of Northern Ireland that I knew so well before I left, and reminds me of the wonderful magical humor of people in dire straits.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bateman, comedy thrillers as they should be!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Cycle of Violence (Hardcover)
I had thoroughly enjoyed Divorcing Jack, and moved onto Cycle of Violence! What a great job! I was sitting there wondering whether I should be laughing, shouting, or crying and ended up doing them all simultaneously! Read Divorcing Jack and then Cycle of Violence and you will learn more about the troubles in Ireland than you could by reading 100 news reports ever could!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cycle of Violence,
By
This review is from: Cycle of Violence (Hardcover)
Odd that some single out this one as weak link.
To my mind and having read everything up to his 2009 efforts it still remains the best work. Dark, witty, well-paced, tragic and a trace of lingering optimism. The ludicrous nature of the ending actually made me cry - as did the cracking one-liner delivered by Miller's dad. And by cry I think they were actually genuine tears as much as tears of laughter. 13 years after reading it still stays with me. If you like sarcastic wit and the driest of humours then Colin's your man and this is the book.
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