Free Books! Or, The Strange Return of Jekyll and Hyde.

This February, Edinburgh's City of Literature scheme will repeat the same nifty trick they pulled last year - the 'One Book, One Edinburgh' reading campaign.This proposed to get as many people in town as possible reading the same book at once – last year it was Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped, this year it will be Robert Louis Stevenson's 'The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'. This was cunningly handled lat February, with free copies of the unabridged Kidnapped, an abridged version and a graphic novel all distributed to Schools and Libraries citywide. Thousands of free copies were additionally distributed through cafes, bars and hotels. How well did it work? Well, because the scheme cleverly took advantage of the much documented appetite that people have for stuff - particularly when it's free stuff - it worked superbly. Even though the book was being gifted all over town it still started selling enough copies to make Waterstone's bestseller lists in Edinburgh – in fact, the novel, the graphic novel and a Scots language version ('Kidnappit') all featured. Magically, Robert Louis Stevenson was the talk of the town in a way he hadn't been for over a century.

And to follow this feat, this year the 'One Book, One City' routine has been further refined. The choice of book is significant. Jekyll and Hyde is better known than Kidnapped, so much so that it's become an everyday expression. And it's a shorter book, so even the busiest of Edinburghers can easily find time in their schedules to read or re-read it. There have been innumerable film, stage and television adaptations, and yet the book lends itself to re-reading because it has a complex, layered, structure that's never been completely captured in other media. Jekyll and Hyde is a tale containing many tales as a lawyer, with the very Victorian name Gabriel John Utterson, investigates the affairs of the mysterious Mr Hyde, eventually realising the truth of his connection to Dr Jekyll when he discovers a series of letters. Anyone who hasn't read the book will still almost certainly know what the twist is at the conclusion, and yet because of the form of the tale, where Utterson's investigation continuously unveils more of Hyde's secrets, there is a gripping sense of urgency throughout. Stevenson's skill as a writer is still abundantly clear today.

Still, anyone preferring a lighter read (or wanting their weans to gie them peace) will be glad to know that writer Alan Grant and artist Cam Kennedy will adapt the story into a graphic novel, just as they did with Kidnapped. The graphic novel of Kidnapped was massively popular, though at 64 pages it did have to be drastically abridged. But since Jekyll and Hyde is a shorter novel or (just because I like the term) 'novella', it lends itself to a much better type of adaptation –call it 'a graphic novella' in fact. And since Robert Louis Stevenson is otherwise indisposed, it's nice that Alan Grant will be appearing at the Royal College of Surgeons on the 29th of January to talk about his work with Denise Mina. He'll almost certainly bring up his work on Jekyll and Hyde, which you should consider a taster of February's project - when it'll be on everyone's lips. So get ready, because Stevensonmania is about to take the capital by storm all over again. You have been warned.