June 8, 18.23pm
Summer seems to be the non-fiction season at Orion, who have buried my doormat under a flood of titles (well, two anyway) filling factual gaps in the knowledge base of the loyal readership of two of their biggest names.
The first hales from Florida, where Michael Connelly has condensed 10 years of crime reporting for papers in the Sunshine and Golden states into Crime Beat. I'm not usually one for too much Real Crime, but this, at first flick, appears to be delivered with Connelly's customary style and ease, and should be a good read.
The second grabbed my attention more. It is Rebus's Scotland, Ian Rankin's personal journey through his homeland, illustrated by some quite stunning and atmospheric photography. (It really is grim up north, in parts anyway).
But to my immense disappointment - after a longish but not exhaustive search - little seemed to have been made of the Ox, the smoke-filled den in Edinburgh's new town where Rebus imbibes spirit and impart wisdom in equal measure and where Rankin apparently goes to download inspiration.
I visited the Ox in November 2002 as part of an unscheduled detour during a stag weekend when a tour guide pointed out the pub from the top of an open top bus. It's a fantastic, proper boozer. Just a lick from being spit and sawdust and a coat of paint from dingy.
There are few places I've visited - the famous cornfield at Antietam Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland, being another - where I've felt the presence of ghosts. In the Ox, of course, the obvious ones are Rebus and Siobhain, and in the back room of the pub you could almost see them sitting in the corner. But also generations of Edinburgh drinkers philosophising, arguing, fighting but mostly just drinking.
For a Rankin fan, no tour of Edinburgh is complete without a visit.