Explore the sinister Edinburgh of Inspector McLean as best-selling author James Oswald comes to town to launch the tenth novel in the series - here's where to meet him

The character first appeared in best-selling author James Oswald's 2012 novel Natural Causes. Later this month, he returns for his tenth investigation in Bury Them Deep, which finds the detective, now a DCI, unravelling the mysterious disappearance of one of his team and, once again, fearing there is a far greater evil at work.

Mixing crime with the supernatural, Oswald uses Edinburgh's often dark and grisly past to colour his novels. Ahead of an appearance at Topping and Company Booksellers next week, where he will launch the latest novel, the writer reflects on the series so far to paint a picture of McLean's Edinburgh, book by book.

It all started with Natural Causes, a book that introduced readers to then Inspector Tony McLean and the fictional Newington Arms, the pub closest to the copper's tenement flat and where he meets up with is oldest friend and once-flatmate, Phil Jenkins for a pint. It's based a local bar, says Oswald, our money's on that being The Abbey.

McLean's top floor tenement flat at 19, East Preston Street, featured heavily in the second mystery, The Book of Souls.

"This was the flat I lived in as a (failed) postgrad student, studying Artificial Intelligence in 1991," Oswald explains. "I used it for McLean as it was easy to describe, and was close enough to St Leonard’s police station to make sense as somewhere a young detective might live. Perhaps somewhat cruelly, I also burned it to the ground in this book."

McLean's third outing in The Hangman’s Song revealed his love of whisky and the Scotch Malt Whisky Society.

"Tony has a fondness for the occasional dram - something he inherited from his grandmother who raised him after his parents died in a plane crash when he was still very young," explains the writer. "He gets single-cask bottlings from the Scotch Malt Whisky Society in Leith, although to date he’s not visited either The Vaults or the club on Queen Street in any of the books. I may have to change that."

"Many of the settings for the early books are based on places I have lived," he reflects, "I spent five years in Roslin, and would walk the dogs down past the chapel and castle, then along the glen towards Loanhead almost every day. I must have had dark thoughts as I strolled, as this is the second book I’ve written where a dead body is found floating in the waters of the South Esk."

Next, Prayer for the Dead saw the detective explore Gilmerton Cove, a place Oswald stumbled upon by accident while researching the previous book.

"As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to kill someone in these eerie underground caverns, metaphorically speaking, of course," he admits. "They’re a bit off the tourist trail, but well worth the effort of a visit."

Oswald's own past is again reflected in book six, The Damage Done, in which Rothesay Mews makes an appearance.

"My godmother, after whom Detective Constable Janie Harrison is named, lived in one of the converted coach houses in Rothesay Mews for a while, and I have fond memories of visiting her there," he says. "I made that house the city home of the man who dies at the beginning of the story, and based his country retreat on a modern concrete and glass house in the East Neuk of Fife where my sister spent one of her undergraduate years while studying at St Andrews. My books are full of places I’ve known, people I’ve met and conversations I’ve unobtrusively overheard."

Jawbone Walk on The Meadows is the focus of the appropriately titled book seven, Written In Bones. "I had been intending to write a different story for this book, and was checking out some details about the Meadows when I was struck by the image of a dead body, high in the bare winter branches of one of the old Wych Elms on Jawbone Walk," reveals Oswald. "It was such a bizarre idea I had to pursue it, abandoning the original idea, which became Cold As The Grave - book nine in the series."

"The Gathering Dark is an adaptation of the first story I ever wrote to feature Tony McLean, a comic script ghost story I wrote on spec for 2000 AD magazine in about 1992 (and which they politely, and correctly, declined). In that version, the truck crashed into the front of Boots on Princes Street, which a truck would no longer be able to do."

The ninth novel, Cold As The Grave, isn't the only McLean novel to feature the atmospheric closes of the Royal Mile.

He reflects, "When I wrote the first few stories featuring the character who’d become Tony McLean, back in the early 1990s, the bottom end of the Royal Mile was a bit run down and miserable. The arrival of the Scottish Parliament building has changed all that, but I’ve always wondered who, if anyone, lives in those old, narrow and tall stone tenements. And what dark secrets lurk in the basements beneath the many closes running off the High Street."

Finally, McLean's latest investigation, Bury Them Deep causes Oswald to observe, without giving away any spoilers, "McLean’s police station isn’t St Leonard’s. I made a decision early on in writing his stories that his actual station would be a fictional one, somewhere in the region of St Leonard’s but not the actual station.

"This allowed me to make up stuff about the building - that it’s a modern concrete and glass monstrosity on top of an older Victorian building, for one thing - without having to worry about getting all the tiny details right.

"St Leonard’s wasn’t the home of Lothian and Borders CID when I wrote the first two books either - it had moved to Gayfield Square by then. It has since moved back, but Lothian and Borders no longer exists now Police Scotland has been created. The constantly changing and evolving nature of the police service in Scotland is yet another reason for inventing a fictitious station."

Bury Them Deep is published in hardback by Wildfire on 20 February, priced £16.99, and in paperback, priced £7.99 and eBook

James Oswald will be appearing at Topping & Co Booksellers, Blenheim Place, Thursday 20 February, 8pm, £8 (redeemable against Bury Them Deep), www.toppingbooks.co.uk/