Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
FORMER Bahrain-based civil engineer and member of the island’s writing circle, Frank Muir, has packed up his job to concentrate on creating a series of crime novels.
He’s been given a new pen name by an international publishing house and his work has been flying high in the best-sellers list.
Frank said: “I am back living in Scotland, having chucked in the civil engineering and now writing full-time. I have a new author name – T.F. Muir – at the insistence of my new London publisher, Constable and Robinson.
“I trust all is well in sunny Bahrain. I really do miss the place.”
So far he has penned four books, two under his real name called Eye for an Eye and Hand for a Hand and two under his new literary signature entitled Tooth for a Tooth and Life for a Life.
“Incredibly – or should I say miraculously,” said Frank, who used to live in Adliya and was a member of the British Club of Bahrain, “Eye, Hand, and Tooth were 1, 3 & 4 consecutively, and concurrently, on Amazon’s paid Kindle best-selling charts.”
The murder mysteries feature Scottish Detective Chief Inspector Andy Gilchrist. Frank, 63, who now lives in a small town called Lenzie, eight miles northwest of Glasgow, explained: “Physically, Gilchrist is an aggregate of all the things I wanted to be ... over six feet 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.”
When a young woman’s half-naked body is found on Fife’s Coastal Path, frozen and with remnants of a rope manacle around her wrist, DCI Gilchrist is given the case, in his latest book Life for a Life launched only four weeks ago.
Gilchrist’s investigation uncovers a bloody trail of beheadings and shootings that lead him to the heart of a trafficking war. Links to Scotland’s godfather, the Home Office, and a killer intent on expanding his territory, pull Gilchrist ever deeper into this murderous web, only to realise too late that he has been led into a deadly trap.
Captured by a killer for whom life means nothing, Gilchrist clings to the slimmest of hopes. But with time running out, and no means of escape, he knows he is about to turn up like the others – dead, beheaded, by the beach.
Gilchrist’s survival may lie in the hands of the woman he finds himself partnered, DS Jessica ‘Jessie’ Janes, who has only just transferred to Fife Constabulary.
The Scottish Daily Record was full of praise for the work, describing it as ‘the best yet’ in the series. “As a character Gilchrist is multi-layered, a bloke of integrity who protects his team, yet occasionally acts unwisely, as if he’s daring fate to punish him.
“The relationship with Jesse is pure fiction gold … TF Muir doesn’t do subtlety. However, he does do bloody brilliant thrillers,” the review raved.
All four books are available in paperback from bookshops and online retailers such as ebooks (Amazon) and audio books (Audible).
For more information, visit the author’s website at www.frankmuir.com
