A beer brewing memoir set in CORNWALL
Ten Great Books set in EDINBURGH
3rd March 2025
Edinburgh is the latest location for us to visit in our Great Books series. Ten Great Books set in Edinburgh. Edinburgh is Scotland’s compact, hilly capital. It has a medieval Old Town and elegant Georgian New Town with gardens and neoclassical buildings. Looming over the city is Edinburgh Castle, home to Scotland’s crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny, used in the coronation of Scottish rulers
Yer bum’s oot the windae – Edinburgh saying (‘You are lying or exaggerating’)
A Leap in the Dark by Justin Kerr-Smiley
The year is 1798. David Stoddart is a town councillor by day and a felon by night. After dark he wears a thief’s garb and prowls the streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town. But whatever the councillor steals he gambles away. He is addicted to the criminal underworld and while he fights against his passions, he is forever drawn back like a moth to a flame.
As his debts increase Stoddart forms a gang to increase his takings. One of them is an ex-convict on the run for murder. One night a raid goes disastrously wrong and a man almost dies. The councillor flees and the ex-convict betrays his companions for a reward.
Stoddart escapes to Antwerp in the hope of securing a passage to America, where he can start a new life. His luck runs out and the councillor is hauled back to Auld Reekie in chains.
Fate has turned full circle and Edinburgh’s gentleman thief must pay the price…
A Leap In The Dark shows how we are often caught on the horns of a dilemma: between darkness and light, good and evil. As Robert Louis Stevenson said: ‘Man is not truly one, but truly two.’
A Work of Beauty by Alexander McCall Smith
“I love this city, and always shall. I write about it. I dream about it. I walk its streets and see something new each day – traces of faded lettering on the stone, still legible, but just; some facade that I have walked past before and not noticed; an unregarded doorway with the names, in brass, of those who lived there sixty years ago, the bell-pulls sometimes still in place, as if one might summon long-departed residents from their slumbers.” Edinburgh is a city of stories – a place that has witnessed everything from great historical upheavals, to the individual lives of a remarkable cast of characters. Every spire, cobblestone, bridge, close and avenue has a tale to tell. In this sumptuous new book, Alexander McCall Smith curates his own, distinctive story of Edinburgh – combining his affectionate, incisive wit with a wealth of stunning imagery drawn from Scotland’s national collection of architecture and archaeology. Through a series of photographs, maps, drawings and paintings – many never before published – he takes the reader on a unique tour. Just like the city’s architecture, the book can move in an instant from sweeping views to secret, hidden vignettes. This is a story of famous landmarks and lost buildings; the people who made them; the people who lived in them. ‘A Work of Beauty’ is an intimate portrait of a city by one of Scotland’s greatest storytellers
The Calling by Philip Caveney
A boy wakes up on a train to Edinburgh.He is shocked to discover that no idea who he is or how he came to be on the train – and once off it, he finds himself immersed in the chaos of the Edinburgh Fringe. After a day of wandering the crowded streets, he falls asleep and is woken by the sound of bells tolling midnight – only to discover that is the night of The Calling – a magical yearly event when all the statues of the city come alive. He is the only human ever to witness it. He quickly makes a couple of allies – the Colonel, the bronze cavalryman of the Scots Grey’s monument, and the intrepid explorer David Livingstone. They christen the boy ‘Ed Fest’ and take him to Parliament Square to meet Charles II, the king of the statues, who isn’t particularly fond of ‘Softies’ (humans).He assigns Sherlock Holmes to investigate the boy’s case, to discover his real identity and to get back to his home and family. But as the bronze detective begins to decipher the clues, he discovers that ‘Ed’ is on the run from a sequence of terrible events; ones that could threaten his very existence.The Calling is a magical story set during Edinburgh’s most exciting event – and nearly all of its characters can be observed, standing on plinths in the heart of the city, waiting for next year’s Calling.
The Innocent and the Dead by Robert McNeill
One woman found dead. Another kidnapped. Two cases. Two books. One overworked Scottish detective.
When the body of an attractive young woman is found in woodland on Edinburgh’s iconic Calton Hill, DI Jack Knox quickly establishes that she had worked as a prostitute.
For this reason, getting people who knew her to come forward will prove difficult. Knox will have to cut through their lies, establish a motive and collar the killer.
This is the detective’s dilemma in LABYRINTH, the prequel to a new series of mysteries set in Scotland’s capital.
In THE INNOCENT AND THE DEAD, the second book in the series, DI Jack Knox is called in to investigate a high-profile case. A local distiller’s daughter has gone missing, and when he receives a ransom note, his fears that it is a kidnapping are confirmed.
Knox decides to take a serious risk to capture the abductors, but the stakes could not be higher. The father is wealthy and well-connected. If Knox’s gamble goes wrong, he’ll have hell to pay.
DI Jack Knox is a likeable detective. He likes the odd dram, hankers after his family who are based in Australia, and has a relationship with a colleague he tries to keep under wraps.
Halfway House by Helen Fitzgerald
They’re the housemates from Hell…
When her disastrous Australian love affair ends, Lou O’Dowd heads to Edinburgh for a fresh start, moving in with her cousin, and preparing for the only job she can find … working at a halfway house for very high-risk offenders.
Two killers, a celebrity paedophile and a paranoid coke dealer – all out on parole and all sharing their outwardly elegant Edinburgh townhouse with rookie night-worker Lou…
And instead of finding some meaning and purpose to her life, she finds herself trapped in a terrifying game of cat and mouse where she stands to lose everything – including her life.
Slick, darkly funny and nerve-janglingly tense, Halfway House is both a breathtaking thriller and an unapologetic reminder never to corner a desperate woman…
Exit Music: An Inspector Rebus Novel by Ian Rankin
It’s late autumn in Edinburgh and late autumn in the career of Detective Inspector Rebus. As he tries to tie up some loose ends before retirement, a murder case intrudes. A dissident Russian poet has been found dead in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. By apparent coincidence, a delegation of Russian businessmen is in town – and everyone is determined that the case should be closed quickly and clinically. But the further they dig, the more Rebus and DS Siobhan Clarke become convinced that they are dealing with something more than a random attack – especially after a particularly nasty second killing. Meanwhile, a brutal and premeditated assault on a local gangster sees Rebus in the frame. Has the Inspector taken a step too far in tying up those loose ends? Only a few days shy of the end to his long, inglorious career, will Rebus even make it that far?
Natural Causes by James Oswald
A young girl’s mutilated body is discovered in a sealed room. Her remains are carefully arranged, in what seems to have been a cruel and macabre ritual, which appears to have taken place over 60 years ago.
For newly appointed Edinburgh Detective Inspector Tony McLean this baffling cold case ought to be a low priority – but he is haunted by the young victim and her grisly death.
Meanwhile, the city is horrified by a series of bloody killings. Deaths for which there appears to be neither rhyme nor reason, and which leave Edinburgh’s police at a loss.
McLean is convinced that these deaths are somehow connected to the terrible ceremonial killing of the girl, all those years ago. It is an irrational, almost supernatural theory.
And one which will lead McLean closer to the heart of a terrifying and ancient evil
Death at the Plague Museum by Lesley Kelly
A potentially deadly, mutant strain of flu has hit the UK. It’s up to the North Edinburgh Health Enforcement Team to contain it, by making sure all citizens attend their monthly health check. But now the pandemic’s spreading….
On Friday, three civil servants leading virus policy hold a secret meeting at the Museum of Plagues and Pandemics. By Monday, two are dead and one is missing. Can Mona and Bernard of the HET find the missing official before panic hits the streets?
On Dublin Street by Samantha Young
Four years ago, Jocelyn left her tragic past behind in the States and started over in Scotland, burying her grief, ignoring her demons, and forging ahead without attachments. Her solitary life is working well – until she moves into a new apartment on Dublin Street, where she meets a man who shakes her carefully guarded world to its core.
Braden Carmichael is used to getting what he wants, and he’s determined to get Jocelyn into his bed. Knowing how skittish she is about entering a relationship, Braden proposes an arrangement that will satisfy their intense attraction without any strings attached.
But after an intrigued Jocelyn accepts, she realizes that Braden won’t be satisfied with just mind-blowing passion. The stubborn Scotsman is intent on truly knowing her . . . down to the very soul.
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson
It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident – an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander – until he becomes a suspect.
With Case Histories, Kate Atkinson showed how brilliantly she could explore the crime genre and make it her own. In One Good Turn she takes her masterful plotting one step further. Like a set of Russian dolls each thread of the narrative reveals itself to be related to the last. Her Dickensian cast of characters are all looking for love or money and find it in surprising places. As ever with Atkinson what each one actually discovers is their true self.
Enjoy your literary trip to Edinburgh – and let us know in the Comments below if there are any books you would add! And click here to visit our full list of over 160 books set in the city.
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A few more wonderful books set in Edinburgh to add to your list:
1. Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan.
2. The Fair Botanist by Sara Sheridan
3. The Vanished Days by Susanna Kearsley
‘Voyager’ by Diana Gabaldon really brought Edenborough to life for me, before I stayed there for a couple of weeks in 2017. It takes place in the 1700’s but the streets and castles of Old Town are still there, albeit less gritty and more touristy now.
1 Comment
That’s so interesting – adds a sense of the “footsteps past” I imagine
Jenni Fagan – Luckenbooth. (It’s in your database, I checked!) It’s the stories of different residents of Luckenbooth Close in different years and how a curse on the building affects them all. Elements of the supernatural. I enjoyed it, though some strands are better than others.