SUCCESS IS WRITTEN IN ‘STONE’ FOR NEW AUTHOR

Bupa staff nurse, David Ingram, who works at Elderslie Care Home, Fulbar Road, Paisley, is celebrating his debut novel, The Stone Gallows, being published and receiving great reviews. The novel follows the life of Detective Constable Cameron Stone. Stone is involved in a high speed pursuit of a vice baron through the streets of Glasgow, which ends with the tragic death of a teenage mother and her child. Barely escaping with his life, Stone spends three months in intensive care before recalling the accident. As he recovers and starts to piece together his memory, he discovers his girlfriend and son have left him and moved into the plush home of a plastic surgeon. Perpetually haunted by the consequences of his actions and unable to face the taunts of ‘Baby Killer’, Stone finds himself living in a one-room flat in the worst part of town. Even with a new job and a new love interest, Cameron soon learns that he can’t escape his past. When his flat is set ablaze and his son is abducted from school he realises that somebody out there wants to destroy him. David says: “The Stone Gallows took about fifteen months to write – that’s about thirty to forty hours worth of work a week. It was exhausting trying to fit it around working full-time as a nurse. I've always written as a hobby, but it's only in the past four years I've become serious about it. I wrote five novels before Gallows, none of which I considered good enough for publication. “Gallows was partially inspired by the classic American Detective Fiction of the forties and fifties by Raymond Chandler and Ross McDonald. However, I wanted to update it to a contemporary setting, so I located it in Glasgow, my favourite city. Also, the book was a bit of an experiment - I wanted to see if I could create a protagonist who began the story as unlikable and unsympathetic, and then slowly regain the readers’ trust until they forgave him.” After legal training Colin worked for several years as a debt collector before joining Bupa as a nurse. The Stone Gallows by C. David Ingram is published by Myrmidon Books and is available in most good bookshops and online.