An icy wind was deflected by the damp wall of rock above the laird. He thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of his plus-fours and stole an anxious look at the sky ... "

So run the first lines of a murder mystery to be published this week, which will very quickly reveal that the laird mentioned above was indeed right to be anxious.

It's a rollicking good read, but is an unusual book, not least in its gestation. It was originally written in the early-1970s, however the author never quite got round to getting it published, although he had offers. He ended up putting the manuscript in a drawer in his house in Glencoe and going off to South America to search for the gold of the Incas, as one does.

A singular approach, but a murder mystery writer isn't normally a globally renowned climber who has searched for the Yeti, climbed on to the plateau of Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World, made four trips to Everest and been an adviser on some of biggest feature films ever made. Nor does he normally receive phone calls from Michael Palin halfway up a glacier in the Himalayas asking for advice.

Now in his 78th year, Scotland's first man of the mountains, Hamish MacInnes, is publishing Murder in the Glen - after getting it out of the drawer in January last year and dusting it down.

He styles it as a tale of death and rescue on the Scottish mountains. Set in a fictional glen, which is clearly Glencoe, the members of a mountain rescue team find themselves at the centre of a murder inquiry. As events unfold, it becomes clear they would all be safer giving up climbing and moving to Midsomer to take up morris dancing. But the murderer hasn't reckoned on the forensic splendour of the deductive reasoning displayed by the book's hero, a local poacher.

MacInnes already is the author of more than 20 books about the mountains, climbing and adventure round the world, so why a murder now?

"It was about 1974 I wrote this book. I had written another fiction work, Death Reel, and I quite enjoyed it. I had liked detective novels when I was young (Agatha Christie and Sherlock Holmes) and was keen to try one. When you think about it the mountains are the ideal place for foul play. Having had boulders the size of fridges whizzing past me in the dark, I know that. If you have a motive for bumping somebody off, gravity will do the rest. Just look at at the Arran murder."

This was a famous case in 1889. Two men, John Laurie and Edwin Rose, went climbing on Goatfell on Arran and only Laurie came down. Rose's badly mutilated body was found three weeks later hidden below a large boulder. Laurie had fled from Glasgow. But was later caught, tried, convicted and sentenced to death only to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. It is the only recorded case of murder in the Scottish mountains, since recreational climbing began, and its dramatic potential has always stayed with MacInnes.

So had an eclectic corpus of information he had gathered and gleaned from the multitude of contacts made throughout his extraordinary life. Consequently, the reader is educated in a range of subjects, from the workings of the hydro-electricity and aluminium industries in the Highlands to the ballistics of high-velocity rifles (courtesy of his friends in the Metropolitan Police); the pathology of gun-shot wounds to the inventiveness of the poaching fraternity (which he definitely didn't get from his friends in the police).

But, of course, the subject he writes most authoritatively on is the Scottish mountains. And it is worth reading the book if only to get an insight into the grim reality of a mountain rescue and quiet heroism of our mountain rescue teams week in, week out.

The characters are all invented. "You do a kind of kit job and put them in tweeds." But befitting a man whose father was from Fort William and whose mother's people were from the Braes area of Skye, the Highland figures he creates are not the normal caricatures. They are for the most part witty and resourceful and give a hint of the sense of place that MacInnes so clearly respects.

But MacInnes is very aware of another world-famous climber who wrote fiction, his friend Dougal Haston with whom he went to Everest in 1975 as part of the party led by Chris Bonnington. Haston was to reach the top along with Doug Scott, but was to die in January 1977.

MacInnes remembers it vividly: "Dougal wrote a book in which I actually appeared. He was based at Leysin in Switzerland, but he had been staying with me here in Glencoe at my old house, across the river. Two days after he left here and went back to Leysin, he went to do a ski run on his own. There was an avalanche warning out, but Dougal ignored it and he got avalanched and died. But in his book High Risk he describes the incident of his death, absolutely accurately. It was really uncanny."

MacInnes has survived five avalanches. However, we can only hope this intrepid climber's own fate is not in the pages of Murder in the Glen - in itself the latest chapter in the true drama that is the life of this most remarkable of Scots.

Born in Gatehouse of Fleet, his family moved to Greenock. It was while there that two of his great passions emerged. He built his own motor car at the age of 16, heralding a lifelong interest in design and the major contribution he has made designing climbing equipment.

This includes the first ever all-metal ice axe and also wheeled stretchers currently being used by the Met, forces in Afghanistan and Princess Diana's landmine charity.

It was while living in Greenock, a tax inspector took a 14-year-old MacInnes on his motorbike to the Cobbler near Arrochar for his first ever day's climbing. He was smitten and within a few years would be cycling to and from Glencoe for a weekend's climbing.

The rest, as they say ... but what a history.

The high life

1946 First trip to the Alps

1948-50 National Service, spent mainly climbing in Austria with troops from the British Army of the Rhine on breaks

1953 First trip to the Himalayas

1957 First ascent of Zero Gully, Ben Nevis

1959 Moves to Glencoe

1961 Founded Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team

1965 Founds Search and Rescue Dogs Association and completes first winter traverse of Cuillin Ridge, Skye

1972 Publishes International Mountain Rescue Handbook

1973 First ascent of the Prow of Roraima in Venezuela

1975 Last trip to Everest, pictured below. Climbing adviser and climbing double for the film The Eiger Sanction

1987 Climbing adviser and climbing double for the film The Mission

1991 Retires as leader of Glencoe Mountain Rescue Team

1993 Helps lay foundations of Scottish Avalanche Information Service

2003 Inducted into Scottish Sporting Hall of Fame

2008 Is awarded inaugural Scottish Award for Excellence in Mountain Culture