Val McDermid talks about the novels that have influenced her in the Guardian bookshop challenge, 7 June 2010.

After graduation, she became a journalist and began her literary career as a dramatist. Her first success as a novelist, Report for Murder: The First Lindsay Gordon Mystery occurred in 1987. [3] Sally Rowena Munt (1994). Murder by the Book: Feminism and the Crime Novel. Routledge. p. 67. ISBN 0415109191. McDermid's works fall into five series: Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, Inspector Karen Pirie, and Allie Burns. Her characters include a journalist, Lindsay Gordon; a private investigator, Kate Brannigan; a clinical psychologist, Tony Hill; DCI Karen Pirie working out of Fife, Scotland; and Allie Burns, an investigative reporter whose stories start in 1979 with a planned set of sequels a decade apart. The Mermaids Singing, the first book in the Hill/Jordan series, won the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger for Best Crime Novel of the Year. The Hill/Jordan series has been adapted for television under the name Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green. McDermid was a lifelong fan of Raith Rovers football club, her father having worked as a scout for the club. [11] [13] [14] In 2010, she sponsored the McDermid Stand at Stark's Park, the club's ground in Kirkcaldy, in honour of her father. [14]Confronting the worst of contemporary crime and struggling to unravel roots that lie deep in the tormented past of Nazi atrocities and Stasi abuses, Tony and Carol are forced to battle for survival against overwhelming odds. In this morass of doublecross and doubledealing, they have no one to trust but each other. In McDermid's case that determination was channelled into writing. At the age of 17, she became the first pupil from a Scottish state school to secure a place at St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she wrote her first novel. It was turned down by several publishing houses and, unable to bear the thought of a nine to five job on graduation, she ended up working as a reporter at the Sunday People, writing novels in her spare time. Since the creation of Wire in the Blood, McDermid has achieved wealth and not a little fame. Does she revel in the praise, the recognition? She laughs, remembering a comment from one of her fans - a Swedish philosopher - who approached her at a book fair. His opening gambit was not about his love for her writing, but the comment: "Do you know that from behind you look just like Jacques Derrida?" It takes her a while to stop laughing. Pensioner in court over vendetta with crime writer Val McDermid". The Northern Echo. 9 July 2013 . Retrieved 31 July 2013. Val McDermid ends Raith Rovers support over David Goodwillie deal". BBC News. 1 February 2022 . Retrieved 1 February 2022.

A book starts small for me - a remark someone makes, or a story in a newspaper," she says. On this occasion the idea came as McDermid was listening to Woman's Hour while on the M6. The show featured an item about cross-dressing men. "Something fizzed in my brain, and there it was," she says. "The idea for the central characters, the plot line, the victims, why they were being killed - everything. I pulled over on to the hard shoulder and started writing." The book won the Gold Dagger for the best crime novel of the year. "In writing that book I was exploring how society, police and the media respond when the victims are male," she says, "when, more often than not, women suffer sexual crimes." a b Wroe, Nicholas (12 August 2011). "Val McDermid: a life in writing". The Guardian . Retrieved 29 May 2019. But the case is about to come uncomfortably close to home. The next victim is a friend of his. And his former partner, DCI Carol Jordan, is herself in Germany, working undercover in a world where human life is cheaper than a drugs deal. She needs his help as much as the serial killer hunters do.

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Raith Rovers ladies' first match since breakaway". BBC News. 6 February 2022 . Retrieved 28 June 2022.

Ferguson, Brian (29 August 2022). "Val McDermid reveals 'Queen of Crime' legal threat from Agatha Christie estate". Edinburgh Evening News . Retrieved 29 September 2022. Queen of crime in stadium thriller". University of Sunderland News and Events. 14 July 2011. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015 . Retrieved 15 July 2013. McDermid was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 2000, and won the CWA Diamond Dagger for her lifetime contribution to crime writing in the English language in 2010. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Sunderland in 2011. [4] She is co-founder of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival and the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, part of the Harrogate International Festivals. In 2016 she captained a team of St Hilda's alumnæ to win the Christmas University Challenge. [5] In 2017, McDermid was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, [6] as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. [7] Work [ edit ] In 1967, Brown wrote an essay about his time at Kirkcaldy High, a bitter, detailed account of how the experiment had affected him. "I was a guinea pig," he wrote. "The victim of a totally unsighted and ludicrous experiment in education, the result of which was to harm materially and mentally the guinea pigs."McDermid is the first to admit that there is snobbery in the literary world when it comes to the crime genre. "It is manifestly clear, however, from the kind of critical acclaim we get, that there are now very good crime writers." It will be a "good day", she continues, when a crime novel wins the Booker prize. McDermid comes from a working-class family in Fife. She studied English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, [1] where she was the first student to be admitted from a Scottish state school. [2] McDermid, Val (5 April 2016). "Scotland is now a place where you can be glad to be gay". The Guardian. McDermid says she is "fascinated with the reasons people do terrible things to each other". Does she find the world a depressing place? "The condition of rage is one in which I find myself starting my day - once I see the news headlines," she admits. So what next for Carol Jordan and Tony Hill? Will we ever see them in a romantic relationship? McDermid says no without any hesitation, sounding a little like a disapproving mother. "The idea of Carol and Tony sitting down to a croissant, having spent the night under the same sheets, talking about serial killers, would feel wrong. I can't make that work in my head."