A new thriller, set in Lanarkshire with scenes at Fir Park, has been written by Motherwell FC chairman Jim McMahon.
Parallax, published by Austin Macauley, is told through the eyes of two main characters and is a gripping tale of painful truths and deadly consequences.
You can buy a copy of Parallax from the publisher here and receive a discount using the promo code AUTHOR0721.
All royalties from sales to Motherwell fans will go as a donation to the club towards our Well In initiative for season tickets for the unemployed and low-income families.
Fatal accidents are rarely caused by a single mistake but are often the result of a series of errors.
A chain of poor decisions leaves Ian White – golf professional and happily married father of two teenage daughters – with a hellish choice. Should he report the death of Katerina Wysklow, a hitchhiker whom he accidentally kills?
If his shame becomes public, it will destroy his family. If he conceals the truth, he must find a way to deal with the horror and his guilt.
The mounting evidence points to her boyfriend’s father – a close friend of White’s – and Katerina’s last known contact on the day she vanished. Will the wrong man be charged? Will White be exposed? Will his conscience intervene? Or will the reckoning come from another direction entirely?
“The bits of the book that are set in Carluke and in Motherwell are redolent of my growing up,” explains Jim.
“It’s easy to write about Motherwell and like everyone my formative years, my family, my locale influenced who I am today. Lanarkshire shaped me, my family – my dad in particular – and Hamilton Academy.
“The detective in Parallax is a Motherwell supporter. There is a lot of stuff about taking his wee boy to his first game and I have memories of my dad taking me to my first game at around the same age.
“The first game I ever went to was Motherwell v Airdrie. This was in the 50s. As you know, memories are imperfect, you don’t have memories, you recreate them every time you think of something.
“But in those days, we had a tiny seven-inch telly, black and white, one channel. Everything seemed monochrome, we were still rationing at the time and then suddenly I was at a football ground with 20,000 people and Motherwell in brilliant claret and amber. There was the noise, Airdrie with their V-diamonds on their strips, for me it felt like I was in the Colosseum. It was brilliant, so exciting, full of life and so different. And it was my time with my dad.
“My father worked in the post office, he got back from work at lunchtime on a Saturday and changed into his suit. We would walk out to Carluke Cross and got on the Law and Carluke Motherwell Supporters’ Club bus, which was mainly full of miners – I think my dad and I were the only two folk on the bus who didn’t smoke.
“We then went down to the game and that was my Saturday, that was my time with my dad. I look back on it so fondly and that’s why I did the same with my kids. The detective has the same feelings about his own son, who has his Motherwell top and thinks that Louis Moult is the best player in the world. There is a chunk of that in there.
“I don’t think the main character is a bad guy. I think he’s a good guy, a family guy, one who makes a mistake that soon becomes a catastrophic one. He then has to deal with the outcome and part of the way he does this is by writing a diary to try and piece it all together.
“The story runs in two parts, told through his eyes and the eyes of the investigating detective. The two stories run out of time set until they meet at the end, which is when it becomes a Parallax. It’s two different approaches to the same incident which eventually meet and cross over.”
