Maid of the Mist, by Colin Bateman (HarperCollins, 10.99 in UK)

The film of his first novel, Divorcing Jack, will have brought this Northern thriller writer to the attention of a wider audience; this, however, is Colin Bateman's fifth novel, and he has moved out of the "wacky Irish" pigeonhole and into a category of his own. The "Irish" content in Maid of the Mist is well down the mix - set in Canada, it features a convention of international drug dealers, an out-of-control rock star, a Georgian hooker, a clutch of native Americans and, last but certainly not least, a cop who fled the RUC after a spot of trouble of the shoot-to-kill variety - although only an Irish writer, surely, would have named an IRA leader-turned-drug-baron Tar McAdam. An easygoing, amiable read.