Edinburgh is the capitol city of Scotland. It is featured in chapter 10 of Career of Evil when Strike takes the overnight train here to meet his friend and ex-colleague Graham Hardacre for information on two of his suspects: Donald Laing and Noel Brockbank. 

Cormoran Strike arrives at Edinburgh Waverley train station. “The station’s situation gave the odd feeling of being at the bottom of an abyss. Through the concertinaed glass ceiling Strike could make out the shapes of dark Gothic buildings towering above him on higher ground.”

 He waits for Hardacre at a taxi rank, where he sits on a metal bench smoking a cigarette. Hardacre arrives in his mini (“a fucking mini“) and they drive up the hill and up “the steep, cobbled Royal Mile, past shops selling tartan and flags of the lion rampant, restaurants and cafés, boards advertising ghost tours…”

“At the top of the hill the castle came into view: darkly forbidding against the sky, surrounded by high, curved stone walls.”

“Hardacre took a right, away from the crested gates where tourists keen to beat the queues were already lurking.” They go through a floodlit tunnel and find themselves high above the city with cannons on the battlements and a view of the spires and rooftops of the city.

Graham shows Strike into his office in the SIB centre in Edinburgh Castle where Strike copies information from Hardacre’s computer screen.

Graham then allows Strike to borrow his Mini to drive to the small town of Melrose.

Edinburgh is also the home of author J.K. Rowling, who has lived there since 1993. Many Potter-related locations are in Edinburgh, including Greyfriars Kirkyard and Victoria Street. J.K. Rowling also wrote some of the early Harry Potter books in some of the Edinburgh cafés, including the Elephant House.

Find Edinburgh on the map here: