Edinburgh has provided the backdrop to stories of detection for almost a century and a half. In the 1860s, a few years before Conan Doyle began his medical studies at Edinburgh University, there appeared a hugely popular series of books with titles including Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh, The Sliding Scale of Life and The Disclosures of a Detective. They were all the work of one James McLevy, an Edinburgh policeman. The now largely forgotten, McLevy was one of the first exponents of the crime genre and a likely influence on the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Like Conan Doyle, McLevy had an Irish background. He was born in Co Armagh, the son of a small farmer. Largely self-educated, he joined the Edinburgh police force in 1830 as a night watchman before rising up through the ranks to become a detective. The collection of stories in this book are based on some of the 2,220 cases he dealt with in the course of his career, wonderfully evoking the spirit of the city, and the vivid descriptions of its criminal classes as they moved between the very different worlds of the Old and New Towns.

McLevy: The Edinburgh Detective

Literature & Fiction

McLevy, James

Genre Fiction

Birlinn

James McLevy was an Edinburgh policeman in the 19th century. He was one of the first crime writes--filling his pages with tales of fights, prostitution, robberies, and other encounters on his beat in the capital.

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Mercat Pr

Edinburgh enjoys a high profile nowadays when it comes to crime fiction. Writers like Ian Rankin, Christopher Brookmyre and Quintin Jardine all set their best-selling novels in the Scottish capital. What is less well known is that the city has provided the backdrop to stories of detection for almost a century and a half. In the 1860s, a few years before Conan Doyle began his medical studies at Edinburgh University, there appeared a hugely popular series of books with titles like "Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh", "The Sliding Scale of Life" and "The Disclosures of a Detective". They were all the work of one James McLevy, an Edinburgh policeman. McLevy had been all but forgotten until Mercat Press reissued a selection of his work in 2001, when the stories received widespread acclaim, notably from Quintin Jardine - "These stories are true crime classics, imbued with all the pathos, darkness and occasional humour that you will find in the best crime fiction ...They remain an outstandingly good read, as well as being a very important contribution to the social history of that time." This new volume, featuring true accounts of a further 29 of McLevy's cases, gathers together the rest of the famous sleuth's writings.

McLevy Returns: Further Disclosures of the Edinburgh Detective

Mercat Press

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