Simon Ritchie talks to York author John Baker about his latest crime novel.

STONE LEWIS is not your conventional hero. With tattoos of a teardrop under his eye and a swallow on his neck, the former jailbird is the sort many people would cross the road to avoid. But there's more to him than meets the eye.

"He does strike you as a pretty terrifying figure, but he's also very vulnerable," said his creator John Baker, 61, who lives at Heslington.

We first meet Stone Lewis in The Chinese Girl, when he has just been released from a long prison stretch.

Trying to adapt to life in his home city of Hull (Baker's home city, too), he comes to the rescue of an Oriental woman, who has come to Britain to find her friend.

"In that novel I played with the idea of masks - what is on the surface and what is beneath," said Baker.

That theme of prejudice and appearances continues in the second Stone Lewis novel, White Skin Man, which deals with racism and the highly-charged subject of asylum seekers and ethnic cleansing.

"Unfortunately, racism does seem to be a problem in Hull," said the former social worker.

"While researching the book I spoke to some asylum seekers and they told me that they had actually been stoned in a park in the city.

"White Skin Man is a political novel, and I'm sure it will be attacked in some quarters, but I thought it needed saying, and I wanted to say it."

The fast-paced novel opens with Katy Madika, a young and attractive photographer taking pictures on the harbour side in Hull.

Her attention is drawn to a foreign-looking man sitting in a caf, and she starts to take pictures of him from a distance. Then without warning he is murdered before her eyes.

The killer sees Katy. He follows her, threatens her and then steals her camera. She listens to the news all day, and reads the papers, but there is nothing reported on the killing.

The next day she returns to the scene of the crime, only to find that all trace of her victim has gone.

But she still has the digital memory card from her camera containing pictures of the killing. Can the camera lie?

Confused, she seeks help from a friend, caf owner Eve Caldwell, who happens to be Stone Lewis' "business partner".

Lewis is slowly drawn into the mystery and Katy's life - and he also becomes involved in a war against a gang of neo-nazi thugs who are terrorising the neighbourhood.

"I did enjoy writing the characters in White Skin Man. I did not want to portray the racists simply as monsters - we have to deal with them as human beings."

Baker is now halfway through his next novel, but it won't be about Stone Lewis or Baker's other creation, York private investigator Sam Turner - the hero of seven previous novels.

"It's a stand alone thriller which is set in both Montevideo, in Uruguay, and York. It's a first person narrative, so it'll be a bit different."

He will taking time off next week however to give two talks about his career. On Tuesday, March 2, at 7pm, he will be at Northallerton library, and at Acomb Library's open day during the morning of Saturday, March 6.

For more information on John Baker log on to www.johnbakeronline.co.uk

White Skin Man is available from Orion, priced £9.99.

Updated: 09:16 Wednesday, February 25, 2004