McLevy returns

McLevys writings were based on over 2,000 of his own cases in which he almost always secured a conviction. In the words of his editor at the time: The name of McLevy is the guarantee of this book. He is known throughout the kingdom for the possession of those many qualities which go to form a successful detective officer. While he is beyond question without a competitor in Scotland, he has very few, if any, in England.Uniquely, McLevy was as good a storyteller as he was a sleuth. His pages are alive with thieves, robbers, thimblers, pickpockets, abandoned women and drunken destitutes and their nefarious activities: the swearings, the fights, the drunken brawls, the prostitutions, the blasphemies, the cruelties, and the robberies. He provides us with a remarkable evocation of Victorian Edinburgh and vivid descriptions of its criminal classes as they move between the very different worlds of the Old and New Towns.