I’ve spent the past 20 years writing novels about Edinburgh, all of them featuring the world-weary Detective Inspector John Rebus. Rebus’s patch is the city centre, which is why, on Easter Monday, I found myself on the High Street, watching one Liberal Democrat photographing lots of other Liberal Democrats.

The photographer was a local MP armed with a small digital camera, and at the centre of each picture stood Ming Campbell, who had come to lend his support.

The Lib Dems were announcing their “manifesto for Edinburgh” in front of some bemused tourists. Flicking through the manifesto, I was impressed to see that under the Lib Dems we city-dwellers will be bicycling more while also doing fewer school runs. Whether this will entail flattening the precipitous city’s many steep inclines and doing away with private schools was not made clear.

I began to wonder what Rebus himself would make of it. He’s never been a great one for politics, perhaps as a result of encountering too many dodgy politicians. In one early novel, an MP is found apparently in flagrante at a brothel, while, in a later outing, a prospective MSP is battered to death in the grounds of Queensberry House. Despite which, I know plenty of MPs and MSPs who are fans of crime fiction, perhaps because we thriller writers cannot help but glamorise an essentially unglamorous profession. As I was musing on this, the MSP Mike Pringle came over to ask how the new Rebus novel was progressing, and then Campbell himself approached for a handshake.

I’m not sure he remembered that we’d met before, on a rowdy TV panel during the devolution referendum. He got a bit cross with me that night and said that if I felt so (negatively) strongly about things, maybe I should run for Parliament. “But then I’d become a politician,” I answered, and that was the end of that. Today he is immaculately tailored and distinguished-looking as he rallies his troops. But it’s not him I’m here to see.

Siobhan Mathers is standing for Edinburgh Central. Her first child is due in July and she requires caffeine, so we head off to a nearby café. She tells me that her partner is standing as a Lib-Dem councillor, and I warn her that they’ll never see one another.

Like her fellow candidates and incumbents, she is excited by the prospect of a mellow yellow Edinburgh presided over by the Lib Dems. Much of the manifesto concentrates on council matters, since this is where the party hopes to win big, but my first real question for her concerns her name.

In my books, Rebus is aided and abetted by Detective Sergeant Siobhan Clarke, and many of the letters and e-mails I receive ask for help in pronouncing her name. Mathers has lived in London and Brussels — how did she get along? Fine, she tells me. It's only when the name is written down that it becomes problematic.

She has family in Dublin and used to promote Manchester at the European Parliament, so she knows quite a bit about trams and is in favour of a new transport system for Edinburgh. But with a kid on the way, she also has much to say on the subject of housing and education — and she wants a second cup of coffee.

Afterwards, I stroll through the city. Nigel Griffiths’s office is closed for the holiday and there’s no sign of the antiwar graffiti that was a recent addition to the building, but at Mike Pringle’s HQ envelopes are being stuffed in time-honoured fashion.

As I head into Marchmont, I start thinking of Inspector Rebus again. He’s lived in this part of Edinburgh for about thirty years, surrounded by students. I see no election flyers in any of the tenement windows, just a single poster protesting against President Bush (over whom the Holyrood Parliament holds little actual sway).

I spent a couple of years in Marchmont as a student, but don’t remember voting. Students, after all, are a peripatetic lot who may never get round to registering, and even if they do may be so traumatised by forthcoming exams that they still don’t make it to the polling stations.

Eventually, I head for St Leonard’s, site of a real-life police station which, for the majority of the books, has been home to my fictional detective. This is where I meet Sarah Boyack, Labour MSP for Edinburgh Central.

She tells me that a lot of the complaints she receives from constituents concern noisy neighbours (those students again?). The typical Edinburgh tenement was not built with hi-fi systems and TVs in mind. Nor is Edinburgh a city that can readily accommodate a high number of cars, and, again, parking is the bane of her constituents’ lives.

Both, however, lie within the remit of the council rather than the Parliament, making me wonder if the typical Scot is actually overrepresented by the existing plethora of councillors, MSPs, list MSPs, MPs and Euro MPs.

Boyack tells me that her constituency overlaps those of four distinct Westminster MPs, which sounds confusing in itself. While we pause at a café on South Bridge, her helpers are busy leafleting. One leaflet is an assault on the SNP, claiming that the “break-up of Britain” would cost every family in Scotland £5,000. The other attacks the local income tax model favoured by both the SNP and the Lib Dems. While both may seem instances of “negative campaigning”, Boyack herself is happiest discussing constituency problems.

We talk about energy-efficient homes, trams, affordable housing and a new Forth crossing — pretty much the same topics I covered with Siobhan Mathers. Maybe it’s because these are what most of us actually worry about in our everyday lives.

Politics, at its core, is about the small, everyday things. Make a difference to those, and you’ve done something substantial for people. But the big picture matters, too: if Edinburgh is to prosper in the 21st century, it needs to lose its fear of change. New housing and a new transport infrastructure are inevitable — with schools and hospitals hopefully not far behind.

I ended my day of meetings and wanderings thinking that the unglamorous profession of politics possesses a heart as well as a head, something Rebus would do well to consider from behind his battlehardened shell.

Ian Rankin will be writing for The Times throughout the Scottish election campaign

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