Published in Scotland Magazine Issue 14 on 2/5/2004.

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Living here isn't quite murder

Roddy Martine talks...

I have a sister who lives in a quiet mews in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town and who was recently appalled when a journalist turned up on her doorstep to ask her if she knew where the murder had taken place.

“What murder?” she asked anxiously.

“The one in Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus book,” he replied.

Of course, the murder he was asking about was entirely fictitious, but that was of little consolation to my sister or her neighbours. Unknown to them, the Scottish Literary Tour Trust was revising a guided walking tour of locations featured in Ian Rankin’s best selling detective novels.

Such is the esteem in which the non-existent policeman John Rebus is universally held, that recent tour participants have included members of the (real) Lothian and Borders police force, a pathologist from Germany, and a judge all the way from Canada.

As a resident of Scotland’s capital, it would be impossible for me not to be aware of the fictional dark side of the city in which I live. Robert Louis Stevenson, creator of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, was born in a house virtually opposite the garage where I buy the petrol for my car. Astatue of the super sleuth Sherlock Holmes stands on the site of the birthplace of his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, less than 100 yards from my home.

And crime fiction continues to proliferate in Edinburgh, although Glasgow has its share, notably the immensely successful Scottish Television series Taggart.

On the east coast, Quentin Jardine’s Inspector Skinn.....

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By Roddy Martine

Section : Roddy Martine's World

Page number : 7