A FORMER Tavistock resident has recently had his second novel published on Amazon Kindle Books.

Sixty-six year old David Aitken has spent most of his working life overseas as a teacher of English as a foreign language in West Germany, the Persian Gulf and Hong Kong.

During 12 years in the gulf state of Qatar, David wrote a column in the weekly Gulf Times and continued this in the Cypress Weekly when he lived in Cypress in the 1980s.

Following the death of his first wife, David returned to his native Dundee where in 2000, his first novel, Sleeping with Jane Austen, was shortlisted for the first-ever Dundee Book Prize and published by No Exit in the UK and by Four Walls Eight Windows in the USA.

His second novel, A Dundee Detective, now published on Amazon Kindle Books, was a long time in the making.

It tells the story of Scott Learmont, who was recruited by British Intelligence while a post graduate of Mandarin Chinese and Classical Arabic. In the course of his career he saved the life of the chief executive of Hong Kong, foiled an assassination attempt on a British Prime Minister and dined with an American President.

After returning to Scotland and leaving behind his private eye days, Learmont is sought out by a an elderly Chinese man, Cliff Kwan, and his nephew Ringo, to help find Cliff's niece who has gone missing.

In the course of the ensuing investigation, Learmont uncovers drug racketeering, sexual manipulation, blackmail and murder. All of this against a background of his own developing relationships with two very different women.