The premise
CHRISTMAS EVE: John Decker, an elderly retired businessman, falls down the stairs at his isolated New Forest home, breaking both his legs. Alone and friendless, and with his only phone left up in the loft, he faces being trapped for weeks and possibly dying from his injuries.
A desperate struggle to survive begins, with even a trip upstairs to fetch his heart pills becoming an horrific ordeal. Wracked by pain and fear, his mind reaches back over a life devastated by an unsolved crime...
1971: John Decker lives near the Yorkshire town of Sketby with his wife Laura and young daughter Zoe. When they suddenly disappear from their moorside home, he becomes the prime suspect in their murder.
Though never charged, Decker becomes a pariah in his home town and moves down south. After becoming a successful businessman in Bournemouth, he begins carrying out his own investigations into the case by pursuing a number of dangerous criminals across the country.
Meeting continuous dead ends, Decker becomes increasingly bitter and prone to violence, and his attempts to build a new relationship falter.
With remembrance comes realisation, as Decker finally works out who abducted and murdered his family. But to prove it he has to get out of the house, and that means spending Christmas Day crawling a quarter of a mile to the nearest road. In the pouring rain...
The author
The Crawl is a unique thriller novel where a man's whole life becomes the scene of the crime.
Writer Richard Stainton is a former journalist who worked for local newspapers across the UK before moving into website work. He now works as a web developer and lives in Bournemouth, England.
In his ever-decreasing spare time, he's written several short stories and novels. One of his stories won the Ingrid Pitt Festival short story award, presented by horror legend James Herbert, He has also written comedy sketches broadcast on Radio 4.
The Crawl is the fulfillment of his long ambition to write a crime novel spanning a whole man's life