New book is Taylor made for author Gavin
Singer was inspiration
His stories are tough thrillers, but Hamilton man Gavin Bell found an unlikely inspiration for his new book – Taylor Swift!
The author, who writes under the pen name of Mason Cross, will release his fifth book, Presumed Dead, next Wednesday, April 18,
It sees his popular lead character, Carter Blake, hired to find a girl believed killed years previously.
However, his investigation in a sleepy American mountain town sees some old secrets emerge.
And the writer takes inspiration from everything for the books.
He laughed: “There’s a character in the book where the visual cues for her came from Taylor Swift.
“I realised when I was writing it, that was exactly how I wanted this character to look like.
“You always take material from anything you can think of, and then work those ideas into the story.”
The author feels that Presumed Dead is different to his previous efforts, which have been praised by the likes of Ian Rankin and Lee Child and all feature Carter Blake – an investigator hired to find missing people.
Gavin explained: “I always designed Carter to be the sort of character dropped into different situations.
“The first book was an action thriller, the third one had some Jason Bourne elements and this one is very much a serial killer book – it’s interesting to have Carter bouncing off these different scenarios.”
The writer feels he has a few surprises for readers in store and added: “This is the first book I’ve done where there’s some big twists in it, so I hope that people like that.”
Gavin will be speaking about the Carter Blake series at two libraries next week. He’s at Halfway Library on Friday at 11.30am and at Cambuslang library next Tuesday at 2.30pm.