By Lloyd Mackey

A PUBLISHED mystery writer, a fire department padre, someone to greet and assist funeral mourners: all these personae are wrapped into Westshore resident Bob Scott.

For close to four decades, he has been a minister of the gospel, with United, Reformed and Congregational churches.

In 2003, he entered the National Novel Writing Month competition which called for writing a novel in 30 days. He took the end product to a writers’ conference, and pitched it to a New York publisher’s editorial director.

Less than a year later, he had a contract for a trilogy – and a substantial advance cheque.

“God has blessed us, in terms of our working situation,” the 61 year old Scott notes.

Shirley, his wife, is a special needs teacher at Pacific Christian School.  “She has told me to keep writing,”he says, “and not to worry about being the main family earner.”

Scott’s daily output of some 2,000 words remains unchanged.  While his crime novels are not overtly Christian, the energy that generates them comes out of a series of spiritual epiphanies and miracles that have characterized the Scotts’ lives.

They include the unexpected healing of his son from burns; Shirley’s recovery from an illness they thought would require surgery; and his own 2003 bout with bladder cancer – which disappeared within five months.

Both Scott and his wife have, along with pastoral and teaching skills, had a fair amount of experience in matters relating to social work and psychology.

Trying to understand how people’s minds work, and the ways they develop relationships with each other – and with God – has, says Scott, become second nature to him.

In his writing, Scott says he found himself developing a facility for forming characters and working them into plausible stories – which required both he and his readers to work toward the resolving of a mystery.

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And then came Avalon Books.

It was one of their publisher’s representatives to whom he was able to pitch his ‘30- day’ book – which, by 2004, had gone through a few months of editing.

Avalon likes well-written fiction in several categories, and has a pretty stable reader base across North American. And, much to Scott’s liking, they appreciated suspenseful material which did not rely on gratuitous sex, violence or profane language.

So, does he get a chance to exchange ideas with specifically Christian authors?

As it happens, he was in a writers’ group led by well-known author and pastor Mark Buchanan of Duncan, probably the best-known Island-based evangelical writer.

As well, despite having no congregation to lead, he has no lack of pastoral opportunities – as chaplain of the Langford Fire Department and in preaching at two seniors’ residents in Victoria’s western communities.

Those experiences, and the counselling related to them, keep him in touch with the human quest for spiritual fulfillment.

The trilogy he is now authoring for Avon is not particularly Christian in content, but it was very much in his comfort zone with respect to story-telling, plot-resolution and people-exploring. The first of the books, published last year, is Advertising Murder.

Its protagonist is Jack Elton, who has been unfairly banished from the Vancouver Police Department. As he is settling into his lonely new life as a private investigator, the body of a young, pregnant Asian woman is found stabbed to death in a downtown office.

The next book, Lost Youth, tells of a phone call received at 3 am by the central character, telling him to come up with $1 million – or his daughter will be murdered. The only problem: he doesn’t have a daughter.

Murder Express, the third book, is written to appeal to readers from age 17 up – and, the author promises, will demonstrate the faith of various characters.

Watch for them in libraries. And they can be found, as well, in several Island bookstores.

May 2008