Witty Little Knitter

So there are people who are socially awkward and have trouble interacting with other people...and there are people who seem to have grown up in a cave without any human contact and therefore have no clue what is acceptable in human interaction and what isn't. The latter are more hillarious as book-characters...unless of course you happen to be socially awkward yourself and kind of fell like the author is taking the piss out of people like you because while you are somehwat unsure how to act in the presence of a person you find attractive, you are also aware that throwing random sexual innuendo at them is a really really stupid idea.No points for guessing that I am quite socially awkward and that occasionally the main-character annoyed me a lot. Overall I found all his quirks, his hypochondria etc. a bit exaggerated and I could have done with only half as much listings of all the illnesses he imagines he has. I must also say that the mystery wasn't exactly overwhelming. I did figure most of it out quite early on I'm German, I know every single possible plot involving NazisBut the thing is...I didn't really care. I loved the writing-style and I laughed a lot (vague knowledge of Northern Irish history might be helpful for getting some of the jokes) and while there were moments were I wanted to slap the narrator there were also many where I adored him.Crime-nerds will also adore dozends of allusions and shout-outs to famous novels and writers.Now I have to make a confession: I know the real No Alibis-bookstore and have met the real owner who is much less strange than the nameless narrator in Mystery Man (in fact he is a really nice man who gives poor students discount on books and -more importantly- cake) and so even though Bateman really just took the name of the bookstore (and the location) for his novel it brought me back to my year in Belfast and made me go all 'awwwwww...I miss it' and so I can't really rate this nove unbiased and am rounding up to four stars, although normally it would have been more of a three-point-something stars book.I will defenitely read more from this author, but I'm not sure, yet if I'll give the second book in this series a try (the narrator did get more stable over the course of the book, so hopefully this trend will continue) or one of the others books Bateman wrote.