THE Buchanan Street underground was quiet the day author Tom Keenan had his photograph taken there.

In his debut novel, however, Tom gives the station a violent makeover, when a hooded gunman opens fire on commuters, leaving several of them dead.

It's one of the number of incidents in The Father, a a Glasgow-set crime thriller.

The book's anti-hero is Sean Rooney, a burnt-out forensic profiler whose fearsome drink habits are spinning out of control even as the book opens.

Though he's unreliable and a law unto himself, Rooney has certain skills that make him indispensable to the CID, which in investigating a chain of killings.

The writing of a novel is another step forward in Tom's varied career.

Born and raised in Hamilton, the 62-year-old ran a TV repair shop in the town for several years before deciding to switch direction.

He began studying at college, training to become a social worker in mental health - a job he still does today.

He became an independent social worker in 2001, and launched a business dealing with mental health law.

He's been writing "for as long as I can remember" and he has published a book before The Father - although that was a non-fiction title, about adults and mental disorder. He has written novels and plays.

Certainly, The Father didn't come easily for him. "I think I edited and re-edited it about 100 times before I was happy with it. And that was start to finish each time.

"It has gone through so many versions over the years," he adds with a measure of understatement

The finished book comes in at over 300 pages, so you can gauge the amount of work that was poured into it.

"I remember submitting the first three chapters to the Crime Writers' Association's Debut Dagger Award, one of the top awards in crime fiction.

"I ended up being shortlisted for that, which was a real boost to my career as a fledgling crime writer. That helped to confirm in my own mind that I was on the right path.

"The characters in the book have changed so much over the years," Tom adds.

He laughs at a memory. "Rooney actually started out as a blind man with synesthesia - the ability to hearing colours and see sounds.

"Some of that is still there, but Rooney has changed so much over the years. Others have been altered as well."

One adventurous device that The Father is notable for is Rooney's internal voice, with which he seems locked in eternal argument.

"I had looked at different sorts of narrative styles," he says. "In the end, I wanted something that gave a real sense of intimacy to Rooney.

"The voice could be a voice in his head. It could be a hallucination, it could be Rooney himself talking."

Tom also made prolonged efforts to highlight a psychological battle between Rooney and another central character, his nemesis.

"It is a crime thriller," he says of the book, "but it's really underpinned by all the psychological undercurrents that are going on.

"I've been a social worker for 31 years, and I've mostly worked in mental health.

"It has given me the chance to get close to people - their feeling, their moods, their conflicts.

"I've met people who have, in a sense, harmed other people, which has given me an insight into that sort of behaviour.

"I've always been interested in why people do whatever it is they do - what are the circumstances that create that in an individual, which would make them want to try to harm someone else.

"All of that has helped me when it came to writing the novel."

The scale of Rooney's alcohol problem makes you wonder if he will live to see out the final page. At one point he comes close to being slashed with a blade after an altercation with another man on the Clockwork Orange.

All Tom says is that "despite his problems he knows he has to pull himself together for the final battle with the other main character.

"But Rooney is under my skin now, definitely. He has been for quite a while now.

"He's still with me. I'm writing a follow-up at the moment and he is in that, too. The publishers want a third one as well. Book two is on its way, book three will be next year - though I have absolutely no idea what it will look like. I only ever thought there would be one book, but now there are going to be three.

"I just want to see where Rooney goes next, what he does next.

"He has been with me now for eight, nine,10 years, so I feel as if I really know him."

* The Father, by Tom O.Keenan, is published in paperback by McNidder & Grace Crime at £7.99

* On the web: www.tom-odgen-keenan.co.uk