Val McDermid


Valarie McDermid is a Scottish crime writer of over 30 novels. Her work is considered part of a sub-genre known as Tartan Noir, and is known for uncompromising depictions of violence. Her books have received numerous awards, including the Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Award.
McDermid is best known for a series of novels featuring clinical psychologist Dr. Tony Hill and his collaborators in the police department. This series was adapted for television, running from 2002 to 2008, and known as Wire in the Blood. The television series Karen Pirie, was also adapted from her books featuring the character of the same name.
McDermid also writes for the British press, and often broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland.

Life and career

McDermid comes from a working-class family in Fife. She studied English at St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she was the first student to be admitted from a Scottish state school.
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, was published in 1987.
McDermid was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 2000. In 2010 she won the CWA Diamond Dagger for her lifetime contribution to crime writing in the English language. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Sunderland in 2011.
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.
In 2017, McDermid was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
In 2025, McDermid was awarded an honorary degree from University of Edinburgh.

Raith Rovers

McDermid was a lifelong fan of Raith Rovers football club, her father having worked as a scout for the club. In 2010, she sponsored the McDermid Stand at Stark's Park, the club's ground in Kirkcaldy, in honour of her father.
A year after sponsoring the stand, she became a board member of the club, and starting in 2014 her website became Raith's shirt sponsor.
In February 2022, McDermid said she would be withdrawing her support and sponsorship from Raith Rovers after the club signed striker David Goodwillie, who had been ruled to have raped a woman and made to pay damages in a civil case in 2017. Following the signing of Goodwillie, Raith Rovers women's team severed ties with the main club and renamed themselves McDermid Ladies, after the writer. McDermid moved her sponsorship to the new ladies' team.

Ink attack

On 6 December 2012 a woman poured ink over McDermid during a book signing event at the University of Sunderland. Sandra Botham, a 64-year-old woman from Sunderland was convicted of common assault, received a 12-month community order with supervision and was made to pay £50 compensation and a £60 victim surcharge.

Personal life

McDermid lives in Fife and Edinburgh. In 2010, she was living between Northumberland and Manchester with publisher Kelly Smith, with whom she had entered into a civil partnership in 2006.
On 23 October 2016 McDermid married her partner of two years, Jo Sharp, at the time a Professor of Geography at the University of Glasgow. Sharp has been Geographer Royal for Scotland since 2022.
McDermid is a feminist and a socialist. She has incorporated feminism into some of her novels.
In 2016, McDermid captained a team of crime writer challengers on the TV quiz Eggheads, beating the Eggheads and winning £14,000.

Lindsay Gordon series

  • Report for Murder
  • Common Murder
  • Final Edition US Titles: Open and Shut, Deadline for Murder
  • Union Jack , US Title: Conferences Are Murder
  • Booked for Murder
  • ''Hostage to Murder''

    Kate Brannigan series

  • Dead Beat
  • Kick Back
  • Crack Down
  • Clean Break
  • Blue Genes
  • ''Star Struck''

    Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series

  • The Mermaids Singing
  • The Wire in the Blood
  • The Last Temptation
  • The Torment of Others
  • Beneath the Bleeding
  • Fever of the Bone
  • The Retribution
  • Cross and Burn
  • Splinter the Silence
  • Insidious Intent
  • ''How the Dead Speak''

    Inspector Karen Pirie series

  • The Distant Echo
  • A Darker Domain
  • The Skeleton Road
  • Out of Bounds
  • Broken Ground
  • Still Life
  • Past Lying
  • ''Silent Bones''

    Allie Burns series

  • 1979
  • 1989
  • 1999
  • 2009
  • ''2019''

    The Austen Project

  • ''Northanger Abbey''

    Other books

  • The Writing on the Wall ; short stories, limited edition of 200 copies
  • A Place of Execution
  • Killing the Shadows
  • Stranded ; short stories
  • Cleanskin
  • The Grave Tattoo
  • Trick of the Dark dedicated to Mary Bennett & Kathy Vaughan Wilkes
  • The Vanishing Point
  • Resistance: A Graphic Novel, illustrated by Kathryn Briggs
  • The Second Murder at the Vicarage in Marple, Twelve New Mysteries p. 33-52,

    Children's books

  • My Granny is a Pirate
  • The High Heid Yin's New Claes, published in ''The Itchy Coo Book o Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Tales in Scots''

    Non-fiction

  • A Suitable Job for a Woman
  • Forensics – The Anatomy of Crime
  • My Scotland
  • Imagine a Country
  • ''Winter: The Story of a Season''