Write back towherell started

Alan Parks' memories of growing up in Glasgow in the 60s and 70s have inspired his series of crime novels set in the city

- ANNA BURNSIDE

WHEN Alan Parks signed up for an evening class called Glasgow's Industrial Past, he had no idea it would inspire a series of detective novels.

But nosing around in the bits of the city that don't make it into travel guides got him thinking about his own childhood. Before he knew it he had created a police officer and sent him back there to investigate murders.

Alan said: "One week there would be a lecture, the next week we went and looked around. We went to Govan and Springburn, places I'd been when I was wee and hadn't seen for ages.

"I started going for walks around where Mum and Dad used to go - our extended family lived in the Milton and Auchinairn. I see what's still there, what's not, what I can remember. That sparks the books."

Six titles later, the method is still working.

Alan, 59, did not set out to write crunchy crime novels. He left Glasgow in his 20s and worked in the music industry, overseeing photoshoots and videos for everyone from New Order to The Streets.

When the music industry shrank in the 2010s, he came back to Scotland to see what was next.

"I didn't know what to do," he said. "Not a proper job - what I did was kind of specific. I wasn't going to work in an office. So I had to think of something I could do myself. Writing was the only thing I came up with."

No sooner had he sold up in London and moved to Glasgow than his old employer asked him to come back three days a week.

Travelling up and down the country by train gave him plenty of time for typing and he wrote Bloody January while watching the north of England roll past the window.