Edinburgh is a city with many stories to tell, so it makes sense to walk around it with the words of writers in your head.

Just as no gallery is complete these days without an audiotape to tell you about the pictures, so you can now tour the Old and New Towns, with the latest literary podcasts downloaded on to your Ipod, and hear of dark deeds, strange encounters and the weird figures who make up the cast-list of Edinburgh's literary heritage.

You can wander up the Calton Hill and hear about its ghosts, or stroll the New Town and get a sense of why Robert Louis Stevenson needed to escape its forbidding classical boulevards and head for the South Seas.

For murder and mayhem, you will need to head for the dark wynds of the Old Town. But you may prefer the respectability of Scotland Street, and the cool gaze of Isabel Dalhousie, McCall Smith's amateur detective. Of course, you may already have bumped into the many real-life guides who offer their services on the High Street, but with a podcast you can commune with the muse on your own. I found the offerings just a little too jaunty and clipped - more soundbite than spell-binding classics. But at least they give you a glimpse of the real thing.

And if you decide at the end of your walk that you want to curl up with Weir of Hermiston or the Confessions of a Justified Sinner, why then, they'll have done the trick, and introduced you to the City of Literature in the best way possible - via the printed page.

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