A former weekly newspaper editor who left to concentrate on his writing career has completed his latest novel.

Douglas Skelton’s The Dead Don’t Boogie, described as a “hard-hitting and witty crime thriller with more pop culture references than a Simon Pegg movie”, is out today.

Douglas left the Cumnock Chronicle last year and has since been nominated for the McIlvanney Prize for his novel Open Wounds, one of four books he has written about hitman Davie McCall.

The Dead Don’t Boogie follows the story of Dominic Queste, a seen-it-all investigator with a nose for a story and Class A drugs.

It explores a brutal world of gangsters, merciless hitmen, dark family secrets and an insatiable lust for power in the highest echelons of politics.

Queste is charged with tracking down a missing teenage girl, but it soon becomes clear that he is not the only one on her trail.

On his blog, Douglas wrote: “With the Dominic Queste books (and I do hope there will be more) I can give full rein to my love of fast-flowing banter while also throwing in hefty dollops of action, mayhem and, because it’s me, darkness.

There is more of me in Dom than there is in Davie. I’ll leave it to those readers who know me to work out what parts of him are me and what parts are the way I’d like to be.

To be honest, I’d rather be more like Davie. He never says anything he doesn’t mean, he seldom says anything out of place (being taciturn does have its advantages) and he has a very direct way of dealing with those who annoy him.

“There are times when I wish I would just shut up. I’m sure others feel the same. That’s something I share with Dominic.”