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NOVELIST Frank Muir is hoping to negotiate a new publishing deal so fans of his popular detective series can catch up with the latest antics of his gritty crime-busting hero.
The Adliya-based writer has already had two murder mysteries featuring Scottish Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist published and is set to have a thriller released in the US.
"Physically, Gilchrist is an aggregate of all the things I wanted to be ... over six foot tall (I'm 5'9"); slim (I'm not), able to run long distances (I can't), has a high pain threshold (I faint giving blood); and handsome (my wife will stick up for me on that one). But emotionally, I think there is a fair bit of me in Gilchrist," said Frank, 61, a civil engineer and business development executive.
"I have two novels in the Gilchrist series published, have the third and fourth in the series completed and hoping a mainstream publisher picks them up. I'm also currently working on a psychological thriller."
Eye for an Eye won the Scottish Association of Writers' Annual Conference's Pitlochry Award given to the best crime novel by an unpublished writer (at the time) and it remains one of the most sought after titles in the Dilmun Club library.
Frank's second offering Hand for a Hand was delayed for over year after a legal battle with song-writing legend, Bob Dylan, which received national press coverage.
The author had used lyrics from Dylan's 1967 classic All Along The Watchtower in his story. But the picky American's representatives made so many demands the book came to a dead end - so Frank swapped Bob for Robbie Burns instead.
"Andy is given cryptic clues to a murder through Dylan's lyrics, but one verse isn't quite correct and Gilchrist picks up on it," he explained.
"So we went to Bob Dylan's people to get clearance for the copyright and they just kept coming back with impossible demands. It kept rumbling on and on. It was such a hassle that I ditched them altogether. But lyrics were an integral part of my storyline - that's when I decided to swap Bob Dylan for Robbie Burns.
"Hand for a Hand starts with an amputated hand being found in a bunker clutching an envelope addressed to DCI Gilchrist. Inside the envelope is a note with one word - MURDER. Thereafter, other one-word clues are served up with other body parts."
Ironically, Dylan, whose powerful songs have inspired countless other musicians, recently named his own greatest inspiration as Burns.
The American singer-songwriter was asked to say which lyric or verse has had the biggest effect on his life. He selected the 1794 song A Red, Red Rose, which is often published as a poem, penned by the man regarded as Scotland's national poet. According to some experts it was based on a song Burns heard a girl singing.
Frank insisted his finished product worked better with The Bard, who was born more than 250 years ago in Alloway, Ayrshire ... and there was, of course, no copyright issue. "I'm really happy with this book. The Bard beats Bob any day!" he said.
Frank's fictional crime-fighter is the complete opposite of fellow author Ian Rankin's world famous hard-bitten Scottish detective Rebus. While Rebus pounds the beat around Edinburgh, Gilchrist's patch is the Fife town of St Andrews, Scotland.
Frank was raised near Glasgow and after graduating as a civil engineer he spent most of his adult life working abroad, from the Middle East to America. He is currently based in the kingdom and is an active member of the Bahrain Writers Circle although business commitments may shortly take him to Doha.
He said: "My character Andy is divorced and his wife Gail is living in Glasgow with their two kids and her new partner.
"When I wrote about his marriage split it poured out of me - it was like I was speaking to my ex-wife. Divorce was just a horrible, terrible experience.
"Once I made the decision to get divorced I then had to get out of the situation as quickly as possible and get on with my life. Fortunately we didn't have kids."
He later returned to Scotland for his mother's funeral and met up with the former love of his life, Anne. "She was the woman I should have married in the first place back in the early 1970s when we nearly got married, then split up."
They wed in November 2009. Anne has three sons, Craig, 25, James, 23, and Gregor, 21. As well as a wife and family, Frank found literary inspiration.
"Anne and I were holidaying in St Andrews one year and were walking back one wet and windy night, when we turned into a side street," he explained.
"I was struck by the moment - a cobbled street with higgledy-piggledy stone terraced houses either side lay ahead of us, castle ruins lay to our back, and the cathedral ruins lay off to our left - and I said to Anne that I thought St Andrews would be a terrific setting for a crime series.
"After that, I had to come up with some gory stuff. I had been submitting thrillers to a literary agent in London, but she turned them all down. In desperation I submitted the first 100 pages or so of Eye for an Eye to her, and she said that if I finished it she would represent me if she liked it, which she did!"
Eye for an Eye and Hand for a Hand were published by Luath Press, a small Edinburgh publisher. Frank said: "When Luath gave me a two-book publishing deal, I did a word count on all the other stuff I had written, considering only manuscripts I felt were polished, edited, or sellable. The word-count was 1.15 million words, which equates to 13 copies of Eye for an Eye. Well, 13 is my lucky number, so what can I say?
"I have written the third and fourth in the Gilchrist series but am trying to take the next step up the ladder by finding a larger publisher. I have also almost completed another thriller already set in the States, which I will submit at short notice to my agent there."
Frank urges anyone interested in writing to contact the Bahrain Writers Circle at BahrainWriters@groups.facebook.com. "It is a really dynamic and entertaining group, with tremendous promise," said Frank.
Frank's books can be purchased on Amazon. For more information on Frank, visit his website at www.frankmuir.com
