Val McDermid
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Val McDermid (born June 4, 1955) is a Scottish crime writer.
McDermid comes from Kirkcaldy and was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she was the first student from a state school in Scotland, and became President of the Junior Common Room. After graduation, she became a journalist, and had some success as a dramatist. However, her first success as a novelist, Report for Murder: The First Lindsay Gordon Mystery, did not appear until 1987.
McDermid's notable characters are a lesbian journalist, Lindsey Gordon; a private investigator, Kate Brannigan; and a psychologist, Tony Hill, who suffers from sexual dysfunction. Her books mainly fall into three series: Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan, and, beginning in 1997, the Tony Hill & Carol Jordan series, the first entry in which, The Mermaids Singing, 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, featuring Robson Green.
McDermid considers her work to be Tartan Noir.
[edit] Publications
Lindsay Gordon mysteries:
- Report for Murder: The First Lindsay Gordon Mystery (1987)
- Common Murder: The Second Lindsay Gordon Mystery (1989)
- Deadline for Murder: The Third Lindsay Gordon Mystery (1991)
- Conferences are Murder: The Fourth Lindsay Gordon Mystery UK title "Union Jack"(1993)
- Booked for Murder: The Fifth Lindsay Gordon Mystery (1996)
- Hostage to Murder: The Sixth Lindsay Gordon Mystery (2003)
Kate Brannigan mysteries:
- Dead Beat (1992)
- Kick Back (1993)
- Crack Down (1994)
- Clean Break (1995)
- Blue Genes (1996)
- Star Struck (1998)
- Half Life (TBA)
Tony Hill & Carol Jordan novels:
- The Mermaids Singing (1995)
- The Wire in the Blood (1997)
- The Last Temptation (2002)
- The Torment of Others (2004)
- Beneath the Bleeding (forthcoming)
Standalone novels:
- A Place of Execution (1999)
- Killing the Shadows (2000)
- The Distant Echo (2003)
- Stranded: a collection of short fiction (2005)
- The Grave Tattoo (2005)
