Portobello Book Blog

Siren Song and the Dark Magic of Edinburgh – by Rebecca McKinney

When I think of the novels I love, they have two things in common: strong characters and a vivid sense of place. For me, people and places are almost more important than plot. When I go on holiday, I like to read books set where I’m going, and I have been known to choose holiday destinations based on books I’ve read.

Siren Song is the first novel in my new noir series featuring the psychic detective duo of Harrison Jones and Amy Bell. It’s set mainly in Edinburgh, with a foray to Athens and the nearby island of Hydra. Who wouldn’t be inspired by Edinburgh? Even after more than 25 years here, I can still wander around the closes of the Old Town or the cobbled avenues of the New Town and imagine a hundred fictional and real life stories. It’s a city with such a fantastic literary pedigree, as well as a dark Gothic vibe that is perfect for a book like Siren Song.

It’s a city of layers and secrets. The Old Town rises up on the ridge of a hill, between the palace of Holyrood and the castle. In between the vertical tenements of the Royal Mile, the narrow wynds and hidden closes all have their own different characters. The little cobbled streets between the wide Georgian boulevards of the New Town hide local pubs made famous by generations of writers. In Milne’s Bar on Rose Street, you might expect to meet the ghosts of Hugh MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig, locked in poetic debate. In the Oxford Bar, where I met the man who would become my husband, you might expect to sit down to a pint with Inspector Rebus. I also met the writers Iain Banks, Andrew Greig and Alasdair Gray there one night in 1997. There was whisky, singing and political debate, and for me—a young postgraduate student—it was food for the soul.

When I first imagined Harrison Jones, I had this image of him leaving Sandy Bell’s Bar, another famous watering hole, and walking down the Royal Mile on a dark winter night. He turns down the North Bridge, and this is where we find him in Chapter One, when he first meets Amy Bell.

Together Amy and Harrison explore Edinburgh’s other secret places: the ones that tourists don’t often see. Their search for the missing singer, Lucy Merriweather, takes them from the seaside haven of Portobello to the cold new developments that have filled in the old harbour areas of Leith and Newhaven. Edinburgh University also features in the book, although I have taken some licence with it. The social anthropology department where Harrison works is based on the department I remember from my time there in nineties. I should add that Harrison’s academic colleagues are purely fictional! 

Edinburgh is my home, so writing it comes easily for me. Writing Athens and Hydra was more of a challenge, since I haven’t been to Greece for a very long time and I didn’t have the luxury of a research trip. This is where a combination of Google Streetview and an active imagine become a writer’s most important tools. I love travelling, but it’s also an act of joyful discovery to research a place, to explore it through maps, videos and other people’s words, and then imagine myself into it.

Right now, when Covid 19 has curtailed our ability to travel, reading and writing can take us to the places we wish we could go. I hope you enjoy taking a walk with me into Edinburgh’s dark, broody heart!