A MURDER mystery set on a Scottish island has scooped a national newspaper's literary prize for a debut novelist.

Kendal College tutor Simon Sylvester, 34, wrote The Visitors at his Burneside home, often balancing his young daughter on his knee as he typed.

He told the Gazette he was “absolutely shocked” and “really, really pleased” to win The Guardian's Not the Booker prize, which is voted for by the public.

“It’s an interesting one because it was set up quite deliberately by The Guardian as a tongue-in-cheek parallel for the Booker Prize, and I think that’s apparent in the prize, which is a mug compared to the £50,000 prize you get for the Booker Prize,” said Simon, who teaches video production and is also a freelance film-maker.

The Visitors is set on the remote fictional island of Bancree - a "scrapbook" of the Inverness-born author’s beloved Scottish islands and coastline. It shares a publishing house, Quercus, with best-selling thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

The story, narrated by teenage girl Flora, took shape during a family holiday to Kintyre, and Simon later visited Islay and Jura to "saturate" himself in authentic details, from the smell of the beach to bees buzzing in gorse, heather’s bristly texture and the taste of whisky.

“Scottish landscapes are very much imprinted in my head and heart,” said Simon. “I couldn’t find an island that did exactly what I wanted in terms of look and geography, economy, population and size, and in the end I had to make one up. I know exactly what it looks like and I can almost feel the lurch in the single-track road.”

The college tutor's ambition is to write full-time, and he would love to work on a book with his wife, Monica Metsers, a painter. He is already hard at work on a second novel, The Hollows, often accompanied by three-year-old daughter Dora. “She pootles in to see me and I end up putting CBeebies on the computer and writing to one side, while she’s sitting on my knee.”

Modest about his debut novel's success, Simon admits The Visitors is “not everyone’s cup of tea”, adding: “I think it’s absolutely wonderful that so many people have enjoyed it. It’s very humbling.”