DETECTIVE SERGEANT GUS THOROUGHGOOD: a history graduate from Glasgow University, Gus Thoroughgood gained extensive experience on the beat in the city’s old ‘B’ Division – aka ‘The Marine’ – before joining CID.

It was during his period as a beat officer that Thoroughgood came across his criminal nemesis, Declan Meechan and the woman he loves, Celine Lynott.

Seemingly on a CID fast track, Thoroughgood’s career came unstuck when he was involved in a near-fatal road accident which was as a result of Meechan’s malevolence.

Thoroughgood is a resident of the city’s West End where he is a frequenter of ‘The Rock’ public house and other well known Byres Road haunts, and also indulges his passion for supporting Partick Thistle football club.

He is a devoted music fan with eclectic musical tastes spanning his heavy metal roots and monsters of rock like AC/DC, Whitesnake and Queensrych; the great crooner Frank Sinatra and Ulster singer/songwriter Van Morrison, to the more poppy tones of the vinyl Vikings themselves A-Ha.

Parallel Lines sees Thoroughgood paired with the vastly experienced, world-weary DC Kenny Hardie where he finds himself involved in an investigation that will pit him against Meechan in a fight to the death and reunite him with Celine. An investigation that will see only two of the trio make it onto the pages of The Hurting: The Glasgow Terror which is scheduled for publication with Fledgling Press of Edinburgh, in July 2012.

DETECTIVE CONSTABLE KENNY HARDIE is a veteran officer of over 20 years police service which has left him tainted and a cynical observer of life. Paired with his younger partner, the thirty-something Thoroughgood, the gnarled Hardie, who is closing in on fifty, is seen as the perfect foil for his Detective Sergeant by their superior officer Detective Superintendent Tomachek.

Married with three kids, and a devoted Rangers supporter, Hardie is apt to see everything through red, white and blue tinted glasses, but behind his world-weary observations and hair-trigger temper there lies a heart of gold.

A man who prides himself on his striking resemblance to the Spaghetti Western star Lee Van Cleef, he loves to flex his eyebrows in a trademark impersonation of the same.

As loyal to Thoroughgood as the proverbial bloodhound, there is very little Hardie will not do for his gaffer and when he decides not to he is never slow to let his DS know exactly why.

Previously having been more interested in counting down the years to his retirement and the completion of his 30 years service, Hardie has had his interest in policing rekindled by Thoroughgood.