Interview: David Ashton, author, A Trick Of The Light

Published on Wednesday 13 July 2011 14:07

LONG before Rebus and Skinner, James McLevy was the Capital's favourite thief-taker.

In his 30 years patrolling Victorian Edinburgh's disease-ridden wynds and closes, Inspector James 'Jamie' McLevy was involved in more than 3000 cases.

Mixing easily with pickpockets and prostitutes, body-snatchers and thieves, McLevy, who joined the Capital's police force in 1830 as a nightwatchman soon became one of the most feared figures in the city's lawless underworld, earning himself the title 'father of forensics' along the way.

Over the years McLevy has been the focus of numerous books and radio series. Originally from Ireland, the detective settled in Edinburgh, where, from 1860, he published three books based on the crimes he had solved - Curiosities of Crime in Edinburgh, Sliding Scale Of Life and The Disclosures Of A Detective.

On the radio, Brian Cox has played the character in more than 30 investigations, the latest of which can be heard later this year on Radio 4. On-air he is joined by actor and author David Ashton as Lieutenant Roach.

Ashton, whose TV credits include Z Cars, Doctor Who, Hamish MacBeth and Monarch Of The Glen has also brought the detective to life in three novels, the latest of which is published later this month.

In A Trick Of The Light, based on the BBC radio series, the year is 1864. In Edinburgh, a confederate officer has arrived from America. Armed with a fortune in cash his task is to buy a ship to break the blockade of Southern ports by the Union navy. Betrayed to the Union forces, however, he is shot dead on the streets of the Capital by a secret agent.

Fast forward 18 years and there are ghosts on the streets of Victorian Edinburgh. Sophie Adler, a beautiful, young American spiritualist has become the toast of the town, thanks to her dramatic seances where vengeful spirits seem hell bent on retribution.

Meanwhile, McLevy appears to have gained an admirer in the shape of one Arthur Conan Doyle when an apparently genteel widow of Doyle's acquaintance is robbed at home.

As he investigates, all roads lead back to Adler and a murderous intent that could prove fatal for both Doyle and McLevy. Recalling how he first stumbled across the character, Ashton said: "I was doing research for a television play about Conan Doyle and came across a passing mention of James McLevy.

"I asked at the British Library and, after what seemed like a couple of hours, this book appeared, a sorry looking thing, falling to pieces and tied up with a piece of dingy ribbon.

"I opened it up and it was like entering another world. Here was this person with this wild humour which I liked, a kind of grandiose quality, someone who really fancied himself as a philosopher with a big character.

"He was known as 'Jamie McLevy, the thief taker' and this idea of him being so proud of what he was doing struck me."I saw the kernel of a character."

Explaining the attraction, he offers, "McLevy has a deep distrust of authority. He gets up in arms as soon as he sniffs it. He is mysteriously Catholic, which he keeps secret, although obviously the reader knows that.

"The only thing he really believes in is justice. As his mother committed suicide when he was tiny he has a fear of madness and the inevitable guilt which goes with it. He also has a wild sense of humour and dances a nifty two-step. A man of many contradictions."

A Trick Of The Light by David Ashton, is published in paperback by Birlinn on 28 July, 9.99