Val McDermid

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]

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]

McDermid was awarded an honorary doctorate from 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]

McDermid's works fall into four series: Lindsay Gordon, Kate Brannigan, Tony Hill and Carol Jordan, and Inspector Karen Pirie. Her characters include a journalist, Lindsay Gordon; a private investigator, Kate Brannigan; a clinical psychologist, Tony Hill; and DCI Karen Pirie working out of Fife, Scotland. 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 has stated that Jacko Vance, a TV celebrity with a secret lust for torture, murder and under-age girls, who was featured in the Wire in the Blood and two later books, is based on her direct personal experience of interviewing Jimmy Savile.[8] In 2010, McDermind received the Cartier Diamond Dagger from the Crime Writers' Association for "outstanding achievement in the field of crime writing".[9]

McDermid considers her work to be part of the "Tartan Noir" Scottish crime fiction genre.[10] In addition to writing novels, McDermid contributes to several British newspapers and often broadcasts on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland.[11] Her novels, in particular the Tony Hill series, are known for their graphic depictions of violence and torture.

Starks Park, the McDermid stand visible to the left.

McDermid was a lifelong Raith Rovers fan, her father having worked as a scout for the club.[11][12][13] In 2010, she sponsored the McDermid Stand at Stark's Park, the club's ground in Kirkcaldy, in honour of her father.[13]

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.[14]

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.[15][16]

On 6 December 2012 a woman poured ink over McDermid during an event at the University of Sunderland.[17] McDermid was signing books, and a woman asked her to autograph a Top of the Pops annual which contained a picture of the disgraced late TV presenter Jimmy Savile. After McDermid reluctantly agreed the woman threw ink at her and ran out of the room.[18] McDermid said the incident would not stop her from doing signings.[19][20]

Northumbria Police arrested Sandra Botham, a 64-year-old woman from the Hendon area of Sunderland, on suspicion of assault.[20][21] Botham was convicted of common assault on 10 July 2013,[22] received a 12-month community order with supervision and was made to pay £50 compensation and a £60 victim surcharge.[23] She was also given a restraining order forbidding her from contacting McDermid for an undefined period of time.[24] The Northern Echo reported that Botham's actions were motivated by McDermid's 1994 non-fiction book, A Suitable Job for a Woman, as Botham claimed that the book contained a passage that besmirched her and her family.[25]

McDermid formerly lived in both Stockport and near Alnmouth in Northumberland[26] with three cats[27] and a border terrier dog. Since early 2014 she has lived in Stockport and Edinburgh.[28][29]

In 2016, McDermid captained a team of crime writer challengers on the TV quiz Eggheads, beating the Eggheads and winning £14,000.

In 2010, she was still living between Northumberland and Manchester with publisher Kelly Smith,[30] with whom she had entered into a civil partnership in 2006.[2]

On 23 October 2016 McDermid married her partner of two years, Jo Sharp, a professor of geography at the University of Glasgow.[31][32]

McDermid is a radical feminist and socialist.[33][26] She has incorporated feminism into some of her novels.[34]

• Official website
• Val McDermid at British Council: Literature
• Val McDermid talks about the novels that have influenced her in the Guardian bookshop challenge, 7 June 2010.
• Jane Graham, Val McDermid: "There were no lesbians in Fife in the 1960s", The Big Issue, 7 February 2018.