‘No Alibis’ – the reckoning…

Reading aloud the words ‘the breasts have been sliced from her body’ then looking out into the audience and seeing your father-in-law raising a sceptical eyebrow… interesting moment. That aside, the ‘No Alibis’ event last Saturday was a joy — for me at least — thanks to the fantastic welcome from the owner of the shop, Dave Torrans, and his team (which included his parents on tea-making duty), and also to the appearance of so many of my in-laws, who’d heard me give my schtick about Spike Sanguinetti’s adventures before (minus the gruesome details above), so were doubly loyal in pitching up when my wife and children had been unable to make it at the last moment due to a vicious kiddies’ bug which is currently devastating our household. ‘No Alibis’ is a brilliant shop — the last independent bookstore in N Ireland, Dave revealed with a mixture of sadness and pride — with a range of books stretching beyond crime fiction to keep you browsing and buying for a long afternoon. Many thanks for having me there; the venue where Colin Bateman bases his ‘Mystery Man’ series was — for a brief moment — a hive of all things Gibraltarian…