#BlogTour ‘The Scribbler’ by Iain Maitland

About the book….

“He’s back, Carrie. The Scribbler is back.”

DI Gayther and his rookie colleague DC Carrie have been assigned a new caseload. Or rather, an old one … cold cases of LGBTQ+ murders dating back to the 1980s and beyond. Georgia Carrie wasn’t even born when the notorious serial killer began his reign of terror across the East of England. Roger Gayther was on the force that failed to catch him and remembers every chilling detail. Now, after all these years, there’s a sudden death featuring The Scribbler’s tell-tale modus operandi. Can Gayther and Carrie track the murderer down and bring him to justice before the slaughter starts again?

‘The Scribbler’ by Iain Maitland is out now in paperback and available from Waterstones as well as other online bookshops of good repute!

Is that enough to whet your appetitie or are you thirsty for more?

Huge thanks to Ruth Killick for inviting me to share this exclusive introduction by The Scribbler’s creator, Iain Maitland!

Kicking off the blog tour for his new novel, The Scribbler, Iain Maitland introduces us to one half of his detective duo, Roger Gayther…

Roger Gayther – How He Came To Be

I’ve loved crime novels and thrillers – detective stories especially – for as long as I can remember. I ploughed through Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels in the summer of 1973 before going up to senior school. The next summer, it was the turn of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels starting with A Study In Scarlet. I’ve been reading detective novels ever since.

Having had two crime novels published – Sweet William (Contraband, 2017) and Mr Todd’s Reckoning, (Contraband, 2019, optioned for television by AbbottVision) – I thought it was time for me to have a go at my own series of detective novels.

First things first, I needed my detective. As with my previous books, I wanted a strong central character. Raymond Orrey in Sweet William and Mr Todd in Mr Todd’s Reckoning are both powerful characters who drive the story along.

I’ve always loved Colin Dexter’s Morse, P.D. James’ Adam Dalgleish and, especially, Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander – older, beaten-up, weary men. I wanted my detective to be like that – and Roger Gayther is; a man in his 50’s who has been on sick leave after the death of his wife and who, back at work, has been ‘shunted sideways’ (his words) into sifting through long-dead LGBTQ+ cold cases.

Gayther could keep his head down and shuffle through files up to his retirement – but there’s been a death that bears all the hallmarks of a serial killer of gay men back in the 1980’s, The Scribbler. Gayther was on the team that failed to catch him. He’s determined to bring him to justice this time. He’s fired up and has a point to prove.

What I love about Morse, Dalgleish and Wallander, particularly Wallander, is that they are all good but damaged and flawed men. So too is Gayther. His wife was an alcoholic. He has a son but they haven’t really talked in ages and are kind of estranged. He sits alone at home brooding, full of anger and waiting to show everyone he’s not at the end of the road.

Wallander is my favourite – he always seems to be storming into situations putting both himself and his colleagues at great risk. I wanted Gayther to be impetuous too – to the point where, unless he is very careful, he will put his own life in grave danger.

I try to write my characters as close to home as possible so I can understand their thoughts and feelings. In many ways they are versions of me. So Raymond Orrey in Sweet William is a younger, very angry version of me. Todd in Mr Todd’s Reckoning is an older, extremely frustrated version of me. Roger Gayther is a kind and decent man – and I hope that’s fairly close to who I am now.

He is old-school in the way he approaches this case, The Scribbler. He works on dogged determination, a dash of inspiration and a little bit of luck to solve cases. He is, in the 2020s, out of time, with his thoughts and opinions being formed way back in the 1970s and 1980s. He struggles with mobile phones, computers and technology.

As the story begins, Gayther is joined by a newly-promoted Detective Constable, Georgia Carrie, and two fast-track detectives, Glyn Thomas and Lou Cotton – can the old and the new pull together to follow procedures and bring The Scribbler to justice? Or will the maverick Gayther break all the rules, putting himself and his team in deadly danger and allowing The Scribbler to get away and kill again … and again?

I really enjoyed his previous book, ‘Mr Todd’s Reckoning’, so look forward to an incoming review of ‘The Scribbler’!

About the author…

Iain Maitland is the author of thrillers: The Scribbler (2020) Mr Todd’s Reckoning (2019) and Sweet William (2017) as well as two non-fiction books on mental health: ‘Dear Michael, Love Dad’(2016) and ‘Out Of The Madhouse’ (2018). An ambassador for Stem4, the teenage mental health charity, Iain also speaks on mental health issues in the workplace. A writer since 1987, he is a journalist and has written more than 50 books, mainly on business, which have been published around the world.