LONDON: JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, has been spotted back in the cafés of Edinburgh, notebook in hand, amid speculation she's writing again - and this time it's whodunnits.
 
"My wife spotted her writing her Edinburgh criminal detective novel," author Ian Rankin told the Sunday Times.
 
Rankin, author of the popular Detective Inspector John Rebus stories, said it appeared Rowling had decided to return to her original creative stamping ground.
 
A cafe in the Scottish capital is where she wrote her first Potter book as a struggling writer before amassing the literary fortune that's made her Britain's richest woman.
 
Rankin, who lives in the same Edinburgh district as Rowling, said his wife Miranda had seen Rowling "scribbling away in a café recently" amid rife speculation among the city's writers that this time it's detective stories she's conjuring up.
 
Rowling hinted on her website after the recent publication of the final Harry Potter book that she would be turning to "something completely different".